The role of Multicriterion Decision Making Methodology in territorial analysis and planning

Abstract

The paper sees multicriterion decision making as an interdisciplinary methodology for decision making problems where there are several simultaneous objectives or criteria to the question in point. The planning of land and water use ways and means is here said to have been, historically, a prime example of this sort of mixed problem solving. The basic elements of any multicriterion methodology and some of its principal lines of approach (River Basin Planning, Water Quality Control, Land Use Planning and Management, etc.), are laid down at the beginning of the paper which then goes on to look into the most important features of the PTMC, a multicriterion support system developed to answer the calls of such problems. This system is then here applied to analyze afresh a classic problem that has already undergone much examination in works on the subject, namely the assigning for industrial purposes of land reclaimed from the sea at the Maasvlakte Peninsula in the Netherlands. The round off', the paper proposes some critical conclusions to then make reference to the relevant sources for a more thorough study of the material it has presented.