Welcome to the MERIT Project



Welcome to the MERIT Project. Integrated policies are widely accepted as the best way to achieve sustainable environmental development. The challenge is to develop a practical and effective methodology that enables managers to make multi-objective decisions, while at the same time ensuring that stakeholders become actively involved in the decision making process; in other words to implement integrated management. The MERIT project will attempt to provide such a methodology. through the development of a generic integrated management tool based on the concept of Bayesian belief networks. This generic tool will be based on case studies carried out in four countries, the UK, Denmark, Italy and Spain.
The sites were specifically chosen to represent four very different environmental, economic and social settings that reflect the problems that are currently facing stakeholders in many parts of Northern and Mediterranean Europe.
Project Methodology and Objectives: The methodology to be developed is designed as a practical tool to help managers implement integrated management policies as defined above. The methodology will be generic and applicable at any scale throughout Europe. It will comprise three elements: 1. Decision support tool The core of the approach is a decision support tool based on probability theory. Bayesian belief networks (Bbns), which have for years been used successfully in the fields of medicine and artificial intelligence, will provide the core of the system. Bbns offer advantages over other policy development tools in that they are able to represent the environmental system as a whole.
The system is represented as a network of nodes, linked in a way to represent cause and effect within the system. Each node represents a variable, and can be of any type (environmental, social, economic etc.), and the 'cause and effect' links between them can be simulated using a range of analytical techniques based on whatever data is available. This may be a data set, output from a model or be based simply on expert opinion. Once a network is complete the impact of a decision can be evaluated by entering the action into the relevant node (variable). This change will then have a 'knock on' effect throughout all those nodes linked to it. In this way the impact on the whole system can be evaluated. Results are presented as bar graphs showing the state of each variable in terms of probability distributions, thus explicitly representing the degree of uncertainty in the system.
			For more information on Bayesian Belief Networks follow this link.
The simple graphical output will help stakeholders more easily appreciate the trade-offs necessary for multi-objective management to be achieved. Furthermore, the explicit recognition of uncertainty will help decision-makers to identify more clearly the risks associated with different management strategies. 2. Quantifiable water resource indicators A set of indicators embedded as objective variables within the Bbn. These indicators will be key variables, and will provide the means to monitor the success of management decisions and be used to guide the development of new strategies. The challenge will be to devise a set of easily quantifiable indicators that can play this important role. 3. Framework for Stakeholder Participation A participatory framework to enable full stakeholder involvement in the construction and analysis of the Bbn. This final, but critically important, component will provide an evaluation of the most effective means to involve stakeholder groups in the decision making process. We will define the best approaches to select suitable stakeholders, facilitate their design of the Bbn, obtain data from them for inclusion in the Bbn, present the analytical results produced by the Bbn, deal with conflict and, finally, select the optimal management plan. It will also investigate the best ways of combining the subjective data elicited from stakeholders with more objective measured data. We do not intend to attempt to resolve all the current water management issues in each catchment, but rather to select a sub-set to illustrate the generic way in which the technique can be applied to help facilitate planning decisions. The issues to be addressed will be identified by representative stakeholder groups at the four sites. The demonstration Bbn for each catchment will thus focus on management issues considered relevant and important by local stakeholders. Widespread implementation of the approach developed by the project will lead to improved management of river basins and help Europe move towards water use which is economically optimal, socially equitable and environmentally sustainable.