Enhancing National Security and Energy Security in the Post-911 Era: Group Decision Support for Strategic Policy Analysis under Conditions of Conflict

Abstract

Energy source diversity has become a fundamental principle of both US energy security and national security. The decision of whether or not to approve a new power plant facility in the US involves complex group decision and negotiation processes. These contentious, value-laden, and multi-faceted self organizing processes involve many decision makers (broad constituencies) with conflicting priorities and dynamic preferences, high decision stakes, limited technical information (both in terms of quality and quantity), and difficult tradeoffs. As population pressures and energy demands continue to mount, advances in conflict resolution can help to improve power plant siting processes as well as US energy security and national security. Specifically, this paper uses advances in the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution and its associated decision support system (DSS) GMCR II to analyze strategic aspects of a multi-party energy dispute involving the co-management of a shared air shed in the Fraser Lowland Eco-Region based on Sumas Energy 2 (SE2), a contentious power plant project proposed for the US side of the international border between the city of Abbotsford, British Columbia and town of Sumas, Washington. GMCR II provides strategic insights for enhancing energy security, national security, and environmental risk management in the United States.

A DEA-TOPSIS method for multiple criteria decision analysis in emergency management

“…By running a search in the Web of Science database, for instance, the keyword "emergency management" returns more than 17,000 papers, spanning from medicine, surgery, pharmacy, operations research and management science, management, environmental sciences, economics, engineering, to political science, to name a few. The significant amount of research in this area does not come as any surprise given that a host of risks are on the rise around the globe, including unanticipated catastrophes as well as moderate-scale repetitive events (Levy & Tajib 2007, Li et al 2009). Many decision analysis tools have been applied to tackle challenging EM problems.…”