Cognitive strawman : public input to a water resource planning system

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to develop an information system to input public values into the planning and evaluation process. A hierarchy of goals is developed and disaggregated until terms meaningful to the general public, and describing the state of the world, can be input to the disaggregation. The relationship between the planning process and the public values expressed by the terms describing the state of the world is discussed. A function is hypothesized to quantify one measure of perceived well-being. The application of the quantifying function to the general public and to sub-groups of the general public is discussed. The conventional scaling techniques of ranking and rating are discussed and compared with a general allocation technique and other psychologic scaling methods to estimate the parameters of the quantifying function. A power function is tested against the satisfaction ratings given a group of samples of water of varying clarity. The parameters thus estimated are significantly greater than zero. The general allocation technique was used to recover the parameters of the quantifying function and compared to the parameters estimated by the regression analysis. The general allocation technique showed promise as a means of recovering the public values. The general allocation technique was then applied to determine the goal and sub-goal preferences of subjects in Arizona and the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. The research indicates that community values can be input to the planning process by use of the disaggregated goal structure and the quantifying function. The general allocation technique, used in a mail survey, shows promise as a means of recovering community preferences. The disaggregation of community goals may provide a means of linking the technical criteria of the professional and the values and goals of the general public. The development of a hierarchy of goals may provide an additional tool for decision makers and professionals in their analysis of public values.