Your submission should consist of the following 5 sections:
- A summarization of the problem statement that describes the issue, setting, and primary interested parties;
- A revised version of your SDM Objectives assignment detailing the fundamental objectives and their performance measures;
- A section listing the alternative actions that were considered (see below) based on the Week 5 discussion;
- A section detailing your decision analysis which should include your final consequence table from the Week 6 assignment; and
- A final decision that provides an explanation for why you chose the action to pursue.
Section 1. Problem Statement
This should be a 3-4 paragraph synopsis, in your own words, of the problem definition for the chosen case study that was presented at the beginning of the course.
Section 2. Objectives
This section should follow the format of your SDM objectives assignment and include any revisions that may have been needed to objectives or performance measures.
Section 3. Alternatives
Based on the Week 5 discussion you should provide a listing and detailed description of the alternative actions you chose to consider in your decision analysis. The descriptions should provide enough detail to understand what the action would require to implement. Section 5 of Runge et al (2011) provides an example of how this information might be presented.
Section 4. Consequences
This section should describe your decision analysis. It should explain the process you used during the Week 6 SMART assignment such as the choice of weightings for objectives (including a justification for these weightings) and the analysis used to identify consistently poor or strong performing alternative actions. You should discuss any ‘dominated’ alternatives as well as objectives that did not help distinguish among actions being considered.
Section 5. Decision
This section should present, in narrative, your decision as to which alternative to pursue. This choice should be informed by your Week 7 Presentation and feedback you received from that presentation. You should address any tradeoffs that you made in choosing between alternatives and other considerations that may not have been modeled in the SMART assignment. Sections 7 and 8 of Runge et al (2011) Download Runge et al (2011)provide an example of decision analysis involving the non-native fish SDM.
The entire document should be approximately 5000 words.
Literature Cited
Runge, M.C., E. Bean, D.R. Smith, and S. Kokos. 2011. Non-native fish control below Glen Canyon Dam — report from a structured decision-making project. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2011-1-12.http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2011/1012