Aim of study: There is a lack of empirical research that deals with sustainable forest management in Mediterranean regions, among the most vulnerable ecosystems. The main purpose of this work is to define the strategic criteria and objectives for sustainable forest management and aggregate the preferences of stakeholders in a Mediterranean region, using AHP and Goal Programming.Area of study: Valencian Community (Spain).Material and Methods: Firstly, we identified forest stakeholders and structured a decision hierarchy. Then a workshop was carried out to test and validate the proposed criteria and objectives, as well as a survey to determine social preferences. Secondly, another survey was conducted amongst experts to prioritize action plans.Main results: Stakeholders’ preferences gave the greatest importance to the environmental criteria (hydrological regulation and erosion, climate change mitigation and biodiversity) with an average weight of 40%. Social criteria (employment, recreational activities and landscape) had a weight of 38% and 22% the economic criteria case (wood, hunting and fishing, livestock, renewable energies, rural tourism and mining). The results showed that new products and services such as tourism, renewable energies, landscape, hydrological regulation and erosion control, biodiversity or climate change mitigation are very relevant objectives. We also prioritized action plans comparing them with the distribution of the administration budget.Research highlights: The environmental and social criteria are much more important than the economic ones in the regional planning of the Mediterranean forest, regardless of the method used to aggregate the social preferences and if the forest is public or private.Key words: Multiple Criteria Decision Making; Goal Programming; Analytic Hierarchy Process; Preferences Aggregation.
Abstract:Collaborative management is a new framework to help implement programmes in protected areas. Within this context, the aim of this work is twofold. First, to propose a robust methodology to implement collaborative management focused on ecosystem services. Second, to develop indicators for the main functions of ecosystem services. Decision makers, technical staff and other stakeholders are included in the process from the beginning, by identifying ecosystem services and eliciting preferences using the AHP method. Qualitative and quantitative data are then integrated into a PROMETHEE based method in order to obtain indicators for provisioning, maintenance and direct to citizens services. This methodology, which has been applied in a forest area, provides a tool for exploiting available technical and social data in a continuous process, as well as providing easy to understand graphical results. This approach also overcomes the difficulties found in prioritizing management objectives in a multiple criteria context with limited resources and facilitates consensus between all of the people involved. The new indicators define an innovative approach to assessing the ecosystem services from the supply perspective and provide basic information to help establish payment systems for environmental services and compensation for natural disasters. OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 1697
The use of online resources for learning is increasing in business higher education, not only in the flipped classroom approach but also in order to supplement face-to-face lectures. The objectives of this paper are eliciting students' preferences and assessing the learning resources (books, slides and videos) in teaching the Operations Research in Business Administration and Management degree.The students' preferences have been obtained using Analytic Hierarchy Process, a quantitative method, appropriate for eliciting and aggregating individual preferences to provide information from a group of people. In addition, the use and assessment of the teaching resources have been analysed using the Likert scale, a qualitative method frequently used in higher education studies.The students who prefer videos the most are those from flipped classroom, although the videos have also affected students from traditional face-to-face teaching. In general, the slides, which synthesize and outline the concepts being studied, represent the resources more used by students of face-to-face groups. Nevertheless, there are significant differences amongst the students' preferences by group.Finally, the videos also contribute to students skills, mainly in autonomous learning. The results and the students' suggestions encourage the teachers to continue developing additional videos with case studies and real applications. Keywords: Student preferences, teaching resources, flipped classroom, blended learning, active learning, cooperative learning ResumenLa creciente utilización de los recursos en línea en la formación de administración y dirección de empresas aparece tanto en el modelo de docencia inversa como complemento a la docencia presencial. Los objetivos del trabajo son obtener las preferencias de los alumnos y valorar los recursos docentes (libros, diapositivas y videos) en el aprendizaje de Investigación Operativa del Grado de Administración y Administración de Empresas.
Sustainable food production plays a key role at different levels, such as countries, producers and consumers worldwide. Commitments of countries to reducing environmental impact include livestock production due to its contribution to greenhouse gases and other pollutants. The purpose of this research is to design and validate optimization models to improve assessments of emissions from livestock. As feed consumed is the principal source of the emissions, we have developed an aggregated optimization model to assess feed intake and therefore emissions at country level, by using the best technical and statistical data. This model provides a common framework to assess livestock emissions for all countries and in particular in the European Union. The model has been validated in the Spanish intensive pig sector, which is the principal producer by head count of the European Union. Results from several scenarios, which differ in animal protein and energy needs, have been compared to those from other methodologies and the Spanish National Inventory System, which assesses greenhouse gases and pollutants annually. This model can be adapted to other species, and applied to other countries and at farm level. Finally, this model is a useful tool to evaluate the effects on the emissions related to changes in animal nutrition, price and supply of raw materials, as well as agricultural and environmental policies.
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