Multicriterion decision support for a conflict over stream diversion and land-water reallocation in Hawaii

摘要

With the demise of the Hawaiian island of Oahu's sugarcane cultivation in mid-1995, policymakers have been grappling with two related questions: how should former cane lands be used, and what portion, if any, of the diverted flow of windward streams should be returned to those streams. This paper proposes and illustrates a multiobjective methodology to aid decision making regarding this and similar problems. It consists of the elicitation of concerns and the structuring of criterion hierarchies, the use of multicriterion optimization to formulate potential solutions, and the employment of discrete multicriterion methods to compare and evaluate those proposals. A discussion of the institutionalization of multicriterion decision support concludes the paper.