Transcript Water quality planning. - Computing Center of the Russian

Approximation and Visualization
of Interactive Decision Maps
Short course of lectures
Alexander V. Lotov
Dorodnicyn Computing Center of Russian
Academy of Sciences and
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Lecture 9. Application of Pareto
frontier visualization in Web and
in e-democracy
Plan of the lecture
1) Standard Instruments of E-Democracy
2) Democratic paradigm of environmental decision making
3) Few words concerning RGM/IDM technique
4) Several applications of the RGM/IDM technique on Web
Participatory Decision Support for Integrated River
Basin Planning
e-DEMOCRACIA-CM (Madrid community)
5) Modified Pareto frontier visualization: interactive MCO
procedures in Web
E-Governance and E-Democracy
E-Governance
E-Government
E-Democracy
E-Administration
E-Participation E-Voting
Standard Instruments of E-Democracy
Political
Process
EVoting
(iii) Decision
(ii) Formation
of opinion
(i) Information
acquisition
0
E-Mail
Chat
Websites
Information
UniBidirectional
Trans- Technical
actional Complexity
The technocratic and the
democratic paradigms of
environmental decision making
The technocratic paradigm of
environmental decision making
• The technocratic paradigm is a usual
concept of environmental decision
making: experts develop a water
management project, and professional
decision makers approve, conditionally
approve with minor changes or reject
the project.
Democratic paradigm of
environmental decision making
• “… the power to make decisions must be
placed as far as possible in the hands of the
persons who are the most directly influenced
by the decision concerned, and not in the
hands of individual decision makers and their
experts. The ‘expert-oriented’ paradigm is
seen increasingly as counterproductive in this
respect” (M.Abbott et al., 1999).
Example of a failure of the
technocratic paradigm in the USSR
An illustration of the failure of the technocratic
paradigm is can provided by the story of the largescale water management project based on partial
diversion of the flow of Northern Russian rivers into
the Volga River basin. In 1981 the USSR communist
party has made a decision to approve the project and
start its implementation. However, mass protests of
environmentalists, researchers, writers and
practically all educated people have resulted first in
suspension of the project and then in its final stop in
1986.
Informing non-experts
Non-experts usually have minimal knowledge on the
ways, how to solve environmental problems.
Nevertheless, they want and often are involved into
political actions related to such problems. It is clear
that the gap between knowledge and actions of
non-experts can be misused by irresponsible
politicians and is dangerous.
Internet can help non-experts understand the
environmental problems and base their problemrelated legal and political actions on such
knowledge.
The democratic paradigm
requires special tools for
elaboration of information in a
form accessible for all people
Internet tools that support the
democratic paradigm: possible
requirements
• simplicity
• transparent form
• objectivity of the tools
Objectivity of the tools
“Information must be supplied under the
same form for all stakeholders and
must be considered by all of them as
objective.” (Cunge and Erlich, 1999).
Comment
A small list of possible alternatives developed
by experts results in an asymmetric relation
between experts and non-experts: experts can
develop alternatives and non-experts cannot.
This asymmetric situation is not equitable, the
objectivity principle may be violated. Experts
may use it to thrust their preferences on nonexperts, and non-experts understand it.
Once again, decision screening versus
final decision making in environmental
problems
We try to make the situation symmetric, i.e. to
help non-experts to develop the decision
alternatives by themselves on the basis of
graphic exploration of the whole variety of
feasible decision alternatives.
An independent search for preferable decision
alternatives can make the situation symmetric
and objective.
The process of independent decision screening
can be considered as the learning process.
Multi-criteria graphic techniques for
decision screening
The main principles of the methodology are:
• Application of a simplified integrated
model of a environmental system;
• Application of a multi-criteria decision
support tool based on visualization of
Pareto frontier
Two main tasks to be solved in the
framework of e-participation in
public decision problems
• informing lay stakeholders on public
decision problems (especially on
possible strategies for solving the
problems); and
• supporting the decision making
(aggregating stakeholders’ preferences
or even negotiations).
INFORMING the lay stakeholders
Web tools based on the IDM technique can help lay
stakeholders better understand the feasibility frontiers and
express preferences by selecting one or several strategies
that best fit their concerns.
It important that it can be done independently of mass media
that can help thrusting the strategies selected by an expert
on lay stakeholders.
The lay stakeholders can base their problem-related legal
and political actions (including e-participation) on such
knowledge.
Supporting the decision making
Web applications of the RGM/IDM technique
are aimed, first of all, at supporting the first,
pre-negotiation phase and arbitration.
However, they can be used for supporting
negotiations.
Few words on the RGM/IDM technique
A database of alternatives in the form of a decision matrix
is considered, i.e., table of N decision alternatives (rows)
given by a finite number of attributes (columns), a part of
which is used as the selection criteria. One or several
preferable alternatives must be selected.
Main features of the problem
The criteria, which used for selecting a small number of
alternatives, are assumed to be real values. Thus, an
alternative is associated with a criterion point. The
method is based on visualization of the Pareto frontier
of the “cloud” of criterion points.
The decision maker has to identify the goal on the
Pareto frontier of the “cloud”. Such information of
the DM’s preferences helps to select a small number
of «good» alternatives. This study can be considered
as a special form of data mining.
Example: real estate on sale
A simple graphic description of the
method
For illustrative purposes, let m=2
(criterion points are displayed in the plane).
Non-dominated points are given by crosses.
Enveloping the criterion points
Approximating the Edgeworth-Pareto hull
of the convex hull (the so-called CEPH)
Pareto frontier is analyzed by user and a
preferred combination of criterion values
(reasonable goal) is identified
The alternatives that are close to the
goal are selected
General case (m from 3 to 8)
Visualization of the Pareto frontier
is based on approximation of the CEPH
and application of the Interactive
Decision Maps technique for the
interactive analysis of the frontiers of the
slices.
Several applications
(discussed yesterday)
• Selecting a location for rural health practice in Idaho
• Application to local water quality planning in Russia
(“Revival of the Volga River” program)
• Mexico: APLICACIÓN DE LA MINERÍA DE
DATOS EN LA LOCALIZACIÓN ÓPTIMA DE
INSTALACIONES PETROLERAS
• Mexico: Aplicación de la Minería de Datos para la
exploración óptima de reservas petroleras
• Exploration of pollution abatement cost in the
Electricity Sector – Israeli case study
Application of RGM/IDM in Web.
Reasonable Goals for DataBases
(RGDB)
Concept of the Web RGDB application
server
Data input
Example of the RGDB display
Selected alternatives
Web RGDB can be found at
http://www.ccas.ru/mmes/mmeda/rgdb/index.htm
Or
http://www.rgdb.org/idm/
EU Water Framework Directive
Participatory Decision Support for
Integrated River Basin Planning
(Funding: German Federal Ministry of
Education and Research)
The Web RGDB was used as a part of DSS
developed by
Jörg Dietrich and Andreas H. Schumann,
Ruhr University Bochum,
Institute for Hydrology, Water Management
and Environmental Engineering
DSS was calibrated for
the Werra River Basin
Ems
Elbe
Weser
Werra
Rhein
Dynamically Calculated Decision Matrix
For the Participatory Decision
Support System, a special form of
the Web RGDB was developed. It
can support negotiations. It applies
selecting several goals and related
small groups of alternatives.
Presentation of RGM/IDM Results
Architecture of the Web-based DSS
The plan of Werra basin management for
the next five years was developed.
Unfortunately, ordinary people (lay
stakeholders) were excluded from the
decision process.
Next German project started now is related
to strategies of water management at the
sea shore of Shandong province of China
(Yellow River delta).
Another Project:
E-DEMOCRACIA-CM
(Madrid community)
A framework for participatory group
decision support using Pareto
frontier visualization, goal
identification and arbitration
R. Efremov, D. Rios Insua, A. Lotov
Application of the research is related to
participatory budget planning
General public must be allowed to have
a word and aid in deciding and
approving how public budgets, mainly
in municipalities, are spent.
The study is devoted to developing
user-friendly, yet rigorous, Web-based
group decision support methods.
The developed methods are based on
interactive Pareto frontier visualization
combined with expression of
preferences in terms of goals and using
goal-based arbitration.
A participatory decision making
process is divided into two stages:
• At the first stage, instead of providing
their value functions, the stakeholders
express their preferences via Web in the
form of feasible (or reasonable) goals
directly on display of the Pareto frontier.
• At the second stage, this preference
information is used in an arbitration
procedure to construct the group decision.
The IDM technique is used for
supporting the stakeholders in identifying
their personal goals.
Since the stakeholders supported by
visualizing the Pareto frontier are able to
identify their goals consciously, we
assume that such goals are the result of
maximizing the value functions of
stakeholders over the Pareto frontier.
Simple-minded arbitration
Preference information provided by
stakeholders
a(Y)
y1
• The stakeholders identify their
reasonable goals
• The weights of Tchebycheff
functions are found that result
in the identified goals
y(1)
y2
Goal-based arbitration scheme
y1
a(Y)
y(2)
y(1)
The arbitration
scheme is based
on averaging the
weights of
Tchebycheff
functions
y2
Using of voting procedures for
testing the arbitration rule
a(Y)
• Participants receive several
alternatives, which are close
to the goal according to the
Tchebysheff distance; then,
they assign score to the
alternatives
6
5
4
2
y(1)
1
2
3
y2
• The lists of alternatives
with score are used in
voting schemes.
A group decision support tool for
selecting a hostel in London town
Criteria :
 Location
 Security
 Price
 Cleanliness
 Staff (service)
The experiment
• 1.First
stage:
Every
participant uses Web to study the problem alone; he/she
obtains the IDM Java applet with the Pareto frontier and
specifies the goal;
2. After it, he/she immediately receives a list of about five
alternatives that are close to the goal;
3. Participants has to give scores to the alternatives (5 for the best
one, 1 for the worst).
• Second stage :
1. The scores given by participants are summed up; the alternatives
are ranked in accordance to the sum.
2. The ranked list of alternatives, along with their attributes, is
displayed to the participants during their face-to-face meeting.
3. The participants are asked to approve the alternative with the
maximal score as the best one (by voting). If they do not accept
such an alternative, the discussion follows and another alternative
may be proposed to be voted.
Additional information
Participants: International group of students at faculty for
Cybernetics and Computational Mathematics of Lomonosov
Moscow State University, consisting of 5 Vietnamese and 18
Russian students. No instructions were given on the decision
support method and the Web system before the experiment.
• Main goals of the experiment:
Comparing the results of the arbitration rules with voting procedure.
Studying the users’ feedbacks:
 whether this resource and the RGM method are intelligible?
 is it worth using this Web resource and additional procedures or it could be
easier to chose a hostel from the table?
Results
The list of 3 hostels with the maximal scores:
– Admotel – 41 points;
– YHA London St. Pauls – 30 points;
– International Student hostel – 26 points.
• The results of voting: Admotel is the best.
• Let us compare it with the result of the arbitration
procedure
Comparison of arbitration rule
and direct voting
• The goal-based arbitration rule gave:
Security Location
YHA London St Pauls
83%
91%
Price Cleanliness
Staff
18 €
81%
79 %
Note that it was second place in the list of best scored hotels.
Compare it with the voting winner:
Security Location
Admotel
86%
93%
Price Cleanliness
Staff
18 €
73%
86%
Thus, the arbitration rule turned out to be close to the results of
scoring and voting. It makes us hope that a balanced decision in
the case of a large number of stakeholders that are not able to meet
can be provided by the arbitration rule.
Experiments with non-mathematicians
• Experiments with karate sportsmen;
• Experiments with orgel musicians;
• Experiments with people that have got
various education;
• Experiments with energy engineering
students (freshmen)
Easy to use – 40%, not easy to use – 40%
Desirable to use in future – 53%
Application of the arbitration
procedure in the case of finite
choice in budget problems
(Spain, URJC)
• List of alternative budget allocation decisions was
formulated and evaluated against selected attributes;
• Any stakeholder uses the RGDB applet to explore
the Pareto frontier of the envelope and to identify
his/her individual reasonable goal
• The arbitration reasonable point was found (using
the Tchebycheff function with averaged parameters)
• The arbitration point was used for selecting one or
several alternatives of budget allocation. In the case
of several alternatives, they are ranked in
accordance to the nearness to the arbitration point.
Demonstration of the Web resource
for selecting a hostel in London
(ask Francesca Pianosi)
Modified Pareto frontier
visualization:
interactive MCO procedures in
Web
Pareto Step
Pareto Step -2
Pareto Race with Interactive Decision Maps