An interactive decision-making approach based on intelligent systems to redraw district boundaries in regional planning

Environmental planning decisions have become a major challenge and are receiving increasing social attention. To contend with the absence of a decision theory in this domain and to solve conflicts in group decision-making, an interactive decision approach has been defined and supported by a computer-based system to automate the different steps of the modelling process. In this paper, the emphasis is on the advent of intelligent systems and the improvement of management support. This support enables individual decision-makers to augment their knowledge about a problem domain which results in a gain in productivity. The different steps of the approach are described and illustrated through a worked example which is a specific decision problem and deals with redrawing the district boundaries in regional planning. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.