What is Structured Decision Making?

Making good decisions in an environmental policy context is difficult because of the complexities in the issues at hand. In addition, it may not be clear how problems fraught with uncertainty will affect stakeholders. Structuring decisions can help overcome these challenges by breaking down difficult decisions in ways that can be acceptable to a broad range of individuals and groups.

Structured Decision Making (SDM) refers to decision analysis often involving stakeholders (who provide value perspectives) and technical specialists (who provide technical perspectives). SDM can be readily described in terms of a series of steps or components (Hammond, Keeney, and Raiffa, 1998; Clemen, 2004).

1. Identifying the problem: The first step in any SDM process is to identify the decision to be analyzed and the decision context. This step can be a contentious process especially for controversial decisions associated with a broad range of stakeholders.

2. Objectives: A second step is to brainstorm a list of objectives that one would want to meet under ideal conditions. These objectives can then be separated into means and ends objectives that are important to stakeholders. Means objectives are characterized as those actions that help one achieve the end or fundamental objectives of the problem (Keeney, 1992).

3. Performance measures: Performance measures should both describe the objective and its consequences (Keeney and McDaniels, 1999). Considering methods of gauging progress over time will help determine if and when objectives have been achieved (Gregory, McDaniels, and Fields, 2001; McDaniels and Gregory, 2004; McDaniels, 2000).

4. Alternatives: Alternatives for environmental problems associated with global climate change should be robust in order to cope with a range of possible and uncertain outcomes. Some alternatives may be obvious or tied to the decision, while others may be identified creatively (Keeney, 1992).

5. Values: Focusing on shared values of stakeholders can help guide decision making for difficult problems.

6. Consequences: It is vital to consider the full range of outcomes for stakeholders and others associated with each alternative before final decisions are made.

7. Value tradeoffs: Identifying tradeoffs can help decision makers evaluate alternatives. An important step in this process is to identify the significant factors in each alternative. This action may help predict which tradeoffs will be more widely acceptable.

For additional information, please see the materials under "Structured Decision Making" in the Recommended Links and Publications sections.

Compass Resource Management's Structured Decision Making site provides more extensive information about structured decision making and should be used in combination with this site to help think through climate adaptation decisions.