Goals and goal orientation in decision support systems for ecosystem management

We explore a goal-oriented as opposed to a problem-oriented approach to DSS development for ecosystem management. Ecosystem management ordinarily is guided by a set of goals that may conflict in various ways. Problems are perceived obstacles to realizing goals. Identifying and resolving conflicts between goals, testing current or projected situations for goal satisfaction, and problem identification all require a robust model of the goal structure for the intended domain. The lowest level of this goal structure must be represented as desirable future conditions consisting of proposed values for observable indicators. A model of the causal, legal, and other institutional relations between these desirable future conditions is also needed. Two projects based on a goal-oriented approach to DSS development are described. The first project has produced an initial prototype that incorporates goals for forest management in rules representing three tiers: management unit goals, stand-level goals, and desirable future conditions. The second, at an initial knowledge acquisition stage, is an attempt to develop a participatory decision-making methodology for socially and environmentally sensitive economic development in Central America.