Collaborative spatial decision making in environmental restoration management: an experimental approach

This paper presents the results of an experimental study about the use of collaborative spatial decision support tools to aid environmental restoration management and decision making. Similar, but non-geographic tools were developed and successfully applied in the 1990s for the computerised support of group decision making aimed at solving business problems. Yet, there are significant differences between business applications and spatial applications including environmental management. These differences motivated the study of habitat restoration reported in this paper. The results demonstrate that maps—the most common representation structures of spatial data in geographic information systems—play only a limited support role. Development of new ways to visualise spatial information and novel integrations of maps with analytical tools including multiple criteria decision models may help develop more effective collaborative spatial decision support systems.