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Strategic management plan evaluation of a river basin district

Patrizia Lombardi (Architecture and Planning Department, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy)

Management of Environmental Quality

ISSN: 1477-7835

Article publication date: 5 January 2010

2274

Abstract

Purpose

In strategic planning and management of environmental resources, traditional multicriteria analysis is usually adopted for evaluating alternative development scenarios against a set of criteria. However, the modeling of the problem is often inadequate for representing the complexity which characterizes the decision. To overcome this problem, this paper aims to suggest the application of an advanced version of the analytic hierarchy process: the analytic network process (ANP).

Design/methodology/approach

The ANP is the first mathematical approach that makes it possible to systematically deal with all kinds of dependencies and feedback among elements. It requires the identification of a network of clusters and nodes, as well as pair‐wise comparison to establish relations within the network elements. The number of comparisons is dependent on the number of interrelations among the elements.

Findings

The method is applied to the Strategic Management Plan of the River Po Basin in Italy. The result obtained is a surprising ranking which places major weight on the cultural heritage and landscape rather than on traditional environmental categories, such as land and water. This result reflects the recent River Po Basin Authority strategy to institute an integrated and coordinated policy action in the field.

Originality/value

The proposed approach has improved the integration of the strategic evaluation in the decision‐making process within the management of territorial development policies, thanks to a better representation of the interrelations among issues within the decision model.

Keywords

Citation

Lombardi, P. (2010), "Strategic management plan evaluation of a river basin district", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 32-44. https://doi.org/10.1108/14777831011010847

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2010, Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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