Experts’ Analysis of the Quality and Usability of SILVANET Software for Informing Sustainable Forest Management

Abstract

It is important today to take account of the opinions of both experts and stakeholders in the sustainable management of forests. SILVANET (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain) is a software package that offers a useful methodology for assessing the preferences of individuals or groups, and applying them to the design of a sustainable forest management plan. The program starts by identifying the personal preferences of the evaluators based on information provided individually when comparing and selecting sustainability options from a series of site pairs. The evaluator is given information on certain sustainability indicators obtained in the area to be assessed. The scope of the evaluator's knowledge of sustainable forest management and the consistency of his/her decisions is assessed, and he/she is then included in a group of people with similar systems of preferences to encourage interaction between evaluators in the same group. The preferences are characterized by matrices that encode individual assessments, the maximization of their utility and the analysis of past decisions. Finally, by identifying preferences, we are able to design the forest management system that maximizes the concept of sustainability for each individual or group of individuals. In this paper, we present the results of its application to mono-specific conifer forest stands, although it can be adapted to other forest types. The forestry management experts classify its usability as good, although non-expert users give it a lower rating.

Validation of a Methodology for Confidence-Based Participatory Forest Management

“…It then shows very small changes that do not depend on the increase in the number of participants. On the other hand, the convergence of opinions grows rapidly from the group of five participants (CoO (5) = 37.59%) to the group of thirty participants (CoO (30) = 77.41%). It then continues to increase, but at a much lower rate (CoO (55) = 81.89%).…”

“…The mean corresponds to the sustainability assessments of a well-informed participant on each type of stakeholder. Standard deviations show variations in data from real participative processes [30,58]. - Table 7 also shows the number of participants for each type of stakeholder.…”

“…The progress in collective decision-making (see, for example, [30]) has led to the implementation of operative computer applications. All of them have important areas that require improvement, but the existing developments are already part of the solution rather than the problem.…”

“…Preferences are captured through a pair-wise comparison (see [30]) of forest management regimens in specific points of the territory. Management regimens must be representative of all the management options for the forest and we shall refer them as meaningful or significant points.…”

Comparison of AHP and a Utility-Based Theory Method for Selected Vertical and Horizontal Forest Structure Indicators in the Sustainability Assessment of Forest Management in the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park, Madrid Region

“…AHP employs pairwise comparison of criteria and alternatives which are translated into weights. The utility theory based method (UTB method), following the developments of Fishburn-and hence utility theory-has been successfully applied to assess management sustainability and to determine stakeholders' preferred management plan [42][43][44]. It is based on a direct (non-hierarchical) process of pairwise comparison of alternatives that show the same forest sites applied in AHP.…”