Decision Making

The Centre for Coastal Health facilitates decision making for clients that need answers to complex problems. We are experienced in several methodologies for assisting groups of people frame their problem; identify goals, objectives and criteria which distinguish what would make a good or bad decision to solve the problem. We have worked with clients internationally and domestically to develop policy and strategic plans.

We are using Delphi methodology to identify and describe Early Warning and Rapid Alert (EWRA) systems that are applicable to food safety. The Delphi method is a structured communication technique, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. For this project, EWRA experts from all continents are being asked to participate in a Delphi survey. They may also be part of a semi-structured interview process, which allows individual experts relatively free scope to identify and elaborate on those issues that they see as important and assists with framing our questions for the Delphi survey.

We used a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) process recently in Sri Lanka to incorporate multiple stakeholder perspectives to determine preferred fish fingerling production systems considering food security and sustainable development objectives. A key strength of MCDA is the ability to incorporate multiple stakeholder perspectives as well as uncertain, subjective and qualitative information into an explicit and transparent, step by step decision-making process.