DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT A Resource Book of Methods and Applications DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT A Resource Book of Methods and Applications Gregory (Grzegorz) E. Kersten Zbigniew Mikolajuk Anthony Gar-On Yeh Editors 'I, Kiuwer Academic Publishers Boston/DordrechtlLondon Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Mainentry undertitle: Decision support for sustainable development:a resource book of methods and applications Includes bibliographical references. ISBN0-88936-906-2 1. Sustainable development Developing countries. 2. Decisionmaking Developing countries. 3. Information, storage and retrievalsystems Sustainable development. I. Kersten,Gregory E. II. Mikolajuk, Zbigniew. III. Yeh, Anthony G.O., 1952- IV. International Development Research Centre(Canada). HC79.E5D43 1999 338.90091724 C99-980239-9 © International Development Research Centre2000 P0 Box 8500, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1G 3H9 http://www.idrc.calbooks/ All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission from Kiuwer Academic Publishers, 101 PhilipDrive, Assinippi Park, Norwell,MA 02061, USA. Published in hardcoverby Kluwer Academic Publishers 101 Philip Drive, Assimippi Park, Norwell, MA 02061,USA http://www.wkap.nl Printed on acid-freepaper in the UnitedStates ofAmerica. For Margaret Kersten, AnnaMikolajuk and Brenda Yeh with thanksfor their inspiration and encouragement. Thank you! Contents Preface xi Decision SupportSystems for Sustainable Development: An Overview 1 Tung X. Bui I. SUSTAINABLEDEVELOPMENT AND DECISION MAKING 1. Sustainable Development and Decision Support Systems 13 ZbigniewMikolajuk and AnthonyGar-On Yeh 2. Decision Making and Decision Support 29 Gregory E. Kersten 3. Decision Supportwith Geographic Information Systems 53 AnthonyGar-On Yeh II. APPLICATIONSAND CASE STUDIES 4. Decision Supportfor Sustainable Land Development: A Case Study of Dongguan 73 AnthonyGar-On Yeh and Xia Li 5. Water Resource Management: A Case Study for EcoKnowMlCS 99 Eduardo D. Gamboa 6. Decision Supportfor Incentive Strategies: A Rural Development Application in Central Africa 131 BenoitGailly and Michel Installé 7. Efficient Strategies: An Application in Water Quality Planning 145 AlexanderV. Lotov, Lioubov V. Bourmistrova, and VladimirA. Bushenkov 8. Integrated Rural Energy Decision SupportSystems 167 Shaligram Pokharel and Muthu Chandrashekar viii Contents 9. DSS for Sustainable Land Management: 183 A South-East Asia Case Mohammad Rais, Samuel Gameda, Eric T. Craswell. Adisak Sajjapongse, and Hans-Dieter Bechstedt 10. Mapping Critical Factors for the Survival of Firms: A Case Study in the Brazilian Textile Industry 197 Carlos A. Bana e Costa, Emerson C. Corrêa, Leonardo Ensslin and Jean-Claude Vansnick 11. Learning Negotiations with Web-basedSystems: 215 The Base of lIMB T. R. Madanmohan, GregoryE. Kersten, Sunil J. Noronha, Margaret Kersten and David Cray 12. Natural Resource Conservation and Crop Management Expert Systems 239 Ahmed Rafea Ill. RESEARCH ISSUES 13. Rule Induction in Constructing Knowledge-Based Decision Support 263 Tu Bao Ho 14. Organizational Memory Information Systems 277 A Case-basedApproach to Decision Support Helen G. Smith, Frada V. Burstein, Ramita Sharma and Dayo Sowunmi 15. Software Internationalization Architectures for DSS 291 Patrick A.V. Hail 16. Software Integration for Environmental Management 305 Victor S. Chabanyuk and Olexandr V. Obvintsev 17. Design of Decision SupportSystems as FederatedInformation Systems 329 David J. Abel, KerryTaylor, Gavin Walkerand Graham Williams 18. Knowledge Discovery in Databases and Decision Support 343 Anantha Mahadevan, Kumudini Ponnudurai, GregoryE. Kersten and RolandThomas Contents ix IV. DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 19. Experience and Potential 369 Patrick A.V. Hall et al. 20. DSS Application Areas 391 Gregory E. Kersten and Gordon Lo Glossary 409 Contributors 415 PREFACE There is a growing sense of concern among the public and organizations from all spectra and corners of the world over depletion of renewable resources,which is off- set by an awarenessof the opportunity to manage them sustainably. This book is a response to that concern, Its objective is to provide resources on methods and tech- niques that take advantage of this opportunity and are useful to both developing and developed countries. The authors and editors believe in the contributions decision support systemscan and shouldhave for the responsible and sustainable use of natural resources and prudentdecisions concerning our environment. We hope that the reader will share this beliefwith us and see the great potential of information technologies and particularlydecision support systems for making better and more informed deci- sions. The Rio Earth Summit of 1992 was convened to address worldwide interest in sustainable development. Agenda 21, prepared for the Summit, and the Rio Declara- tion on Environment and Development provide frameworks for bringing government and nongovernment organizations, businesses, and universities into a joint effort to resolve the issues that prevent the practise of sustainable development. The impor- tance of information and information technologies for decision-making in the area of sustainable development is the topic of Chapter40 ofAgenda 21. The challengeof the Rio Summit has been answered by many initiatives to address the problems of sustainable development and develop methods and techniques to solvethem. One such initiative was the Expert Group Workshop on DecisionSupport Systemsfor Sustainable Development, jointly organized by the International Institute for Software Technology of the United Nations Universityand the International De- velopment Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. Held in Macau between 26 February and 8 March 1996, its objective was to explore the use of information and computing technologies for decision support systems (DSSs) in the field of sustainable develop- ment. The consensus among the participants was that DSSs are necessary for effective planningand management of sustainable development efforts. The prerequisites for the wise and sustainable use of natural resources are the col- lection, management, processing, and dissemination of information to extensionad- visers, planners,administrators, and policy makers who deal with the issues involved in sustainable development. Innovative and efficient information and computing xii technologies allow for systematic collection and timely sharingof data across regions and countries. The transformation of the available data into information and knowl- edge is crucial to the creation of a soundenvironmental impact assessment, for exam- ple, or the construction and evaluation of plans, and their efficient implementation and monitoring. The objective of DSS methods and techniques is to integrate data, infor- mation, and knowledge to help decision-makers reach well-informed decisions. For many developing countries,DSSs are new techniques to deal with sustainable development— which is itself a new concept. The objective of this book is to provide an introduction to DSS methods and technologies, as well as a reference on their use in the sustainable planning and management of renewable resources. It contains se- lected papers presented at the Macau Expert Group Workshop and several solicited papers with innovative DSS applications for developing countries. The applications and case studiespresented include the use of DSSs in economic, ecological, and social systems,as well as in the development processes for sustainable development. Information technology (IT) is the theme of this book; but it also has providedus with a mode of communication and collaboration. Althoughthe contributors, review- ers, and editors live and work in 17 different countries and may have never met, we all became a small virtual community collaboratingon this project. Without the Inter- net, this project could neverhave come to its fruitfulconclusion. Many organizations and people have contributed to making the publicationof this book possible. Our sincere gratitude goes to the chapterauthors who contributed their work. Each paper was reviewed by at least two referees. We thank the following ex- ternal reviewers for their assistance: Tung Bui, Witold Chmielarz, Luigi lannuzzi, Raimo Hämäläimen, Pekka Korhonen, Anita Lee-Post, Geoff Mallory, Stan Matwin, Wojtek Michalowski, Wiodek Ogryczak, Maragareta Soismaa, Abdul Sow, Robert Valentin and Pirkko Walden. Our special thanks go to Tung Bui who agreed to write the book's overview. We appreciate the IDRC support in funding publication of this book and the International Institute for AppliedSystem Analysis (IIASA), Austria, for its help in the organization of the editors' meeting and providing organizational sup- port. Our thanks go to Garry Folven, senior editor at Kluwer Academic,who made the transition from initial proposalto final product possible, and to Bill Carman, manag- ing editor at IDRC Books, BarbaraHauser, projectadministrator at IIASA,and Victor Spassov, president ofVSES Communications, who helped with the editingof most of the chapters. Finally, we want to thank our wives and children for their support, encouragement and patience. While