How to make decisions on complex environmental issues?

In practice, environmental analytics involves an integration of science, methods, and techniques involving a combination of computers, computational intelligence, information technology, mathematical modelling, and system science to address “real-world” environmental and sustainability problems. Effective environmental decision-making is often challenging and complex where final results often involve inherently subjective political and socio-economic facets. Furthermore, while certain environmental and sustainability decision-making specifications may be self-evident (post hoc analysis always tends to be incredibly accurate), more typical problems possess components that cannot be directly included in the underlying decision process without additional manipulation. Such decision-making is frequently further compounded by additional stochastic uncertainties. Consequently, complex “real world” sustainability problems frequently employ computational decision-making approaches to construct solutions to applications containing numerous quantitative dimensions and considerable sources of uncertainty.

Mariia Kozlova

Post-doctoral Researcher, Docent,
LUT University

Julian Scott Yeomans

Professor, Operations Management and Information Systems,
Director, Master of Business Analytics (MBAN) Program,
Director, Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence (MMAI) Program,
Schulich School of Business,
York University, Canada

We trust that the number and quality of the papers will prove to be of significant value to the many different researchers and practitioners who actively engage in applying disparate computational methodologies to sustainability analysis and environmental decision-making using simulation, optimization, and analytics. It is our sincere hope that this book will not only enlighten readers on the current state-of-the-art applications in computational sustainability, but will also serve to inspire further collaboration and cooperation on extensions to these topics. Continuing advancement on these topics is always necessary as “It is difficult to predict, especially the future” (Danish proverb often attributed to Niels Bohr) but, more to the point and borrowing from the deeply philosophical characters in the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes, “The trouble with the future is that it keeps turning into the present”. 

The book by Mariia Kozlova and Julian Scott YeomansSustainability Analysis and Environmental Decision-Making Using Simulation, Optimization, and Computational Analytic” includes a number of such applied computational analytics contributions that either create new decision-making methods or provide innovative implementations of existing methods for addressing a wide spectrum of sustainability applications, broadly defined. The rich diversity of applications within the papers exemplifies the considerable range of both methodological relevance and practical contributions to research in environmental analysis. The disparate contributions all emphasize novel approaches of computational analytics as applied to environmental decision-making and sustainability analysis –be this on the side of optimization, simulation, modelling, computational solution procedures, visual analytics, and/or information technologies.

 

from Mariia Kozlova, Timo Nykänen and Julian Scott Yeomans Technical Advances in Aviation Electrification: Enhancing Strategic R&D Investment Analysis through Simulation Decomposition Reprinted from: Sustainability 2022, 14, 414, doi:10.3390/su14010414

Keywords

environmental decision-making; simulation; simulation decomposition; optimization; computational analytics; visual analytics; sustainability analysis; waste management; water resource planning; energy policy; climate change; industrial ecology; resource recovery; recycling

Tweet