Competence Centre for Decision Aid in Environmental Management

CEMDS is working in cooperation with the Institute of Mathematics, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, on the Competence Centre for Decision Aid in Environmental Management (CCDAEM).

The CCDAEM supports interdisciplinary research on decision-making processes for environmental management. It links assessment methods for decision support within the broader institutional context of decision-making about policies and strategies. The aim is the analysis and development of concepts and tools for advanced assessment and governance in environmental management.

Assessment focuses on the evaluation of different options for environmental management. These options can be infrastructure options (e.g. technologies/systems), or non-structural options (e.g. organization, tariff-models). The target lies on carrying out an integrated assessment within a systems-approach, which covers economic, environmental, institutional, social, and technical aspects. The tools range from simple intuitive ideas to complex mathematical procedures.

Governance focuses on the wider civil, institutional, administrative and political framework, into which environmental management is embedded. It aims at a cooperative way of managing and using environmental resources. The core objective is the implementation of mechanisms to allocate benefits, risks and cost of environmental management in a well-balanced, equitable, and fair way among all stakeholders. It covers various issues, such as community participation, conflict resolution, or institutional strengthening. The tools range from social science methods such as stakeholder analysis to mathematical methods such as game theoretic analysis.