A Review of Computer-Aided Stakeholder Collaboration in Water Resources Planning and Management

Computer-aided collaborative decision-making has become more important in water resources management as the scope of studies has broadened both in terms of planning objectives and the number of interested stakeholders. Policy judgments and the choice of appropriate investments in water resources involve numerous quantitative and qualitative considerations, which, in the context of multiple stakeholders, can make the decision-making context complex and contentious. Therefore, there has been an increasing emphasis to involve stakeholders in water resource planning and management decision-making, including participation in the analytical modeling process. Such stakeholder involvement is believed to lead to a more efficient decision-making process with more transparent treatment of underlying preferences and mapping of decision processes of multiple people. There are a variety of ways in which computerized models can be blended to support collaborative planning and policy-making. Shared Vision Planning (SVP) is one technique capable of integrating computerized models within a collaborative framework. However, there are likely other processes, perhaps not as formally named, that share common objectives with SVP, but differ in how they integrate physical data and views of stakeholders.