Development of a spatial decision support system for post-emergency management of radioactively contaminated land

A GIS-based spatial decision support system (SDSS) is being developed for long-term management of radioactively contaminated land resources. The system is designed to assist decision-makers in the evaluation and selection of remediation strategies for food production in agricultural and semi-natural ecosystems at a regional scale. The suitability assessment of different remediation techniques is based on the level of contamination, the land-use management and a wide range of environmental parameters. Techniques which are found suitable with respect to reducing contamination of food products are subjected to an assessment of potential environmental and agri-economic impacts. This involves multicriteria decision-making methodology to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each technique and to incorporate decision-maker preferences into the assessment. The final output from the SDSS is in the form of maps at 10 m resolution depicting for each grid cell either the most suitable countermeasure or the site suitability for a single countermeasure. This paper discusses the need for a spatial decision support system to optimise remediation strategies, provides an explanation of the methodology behind the system and describes how it can be implemented within the context of a GIS.