Decision Support Systems in Holistic Planning of Mutually Impacting Projects

As many different issues interplay in the field of Coastal Engineering, it dawns that there may quite plausibly be very important interactions and inter-dependencies between nearby projects[1]. In particular, three major set of aspects are investigated in this research, including Coastal Engineering, Engineering Economics and Environmental Impact Assessment; through which relevant criteria are distinguished to define a context for the mutually impacting projects incoastal areas, using analytical approaches as well as case studies. In order to achieve the above-mentioned objectives, various issues which affect decision making procedure are studied [2]; especially those which are important in the field of mutually impactingprojects. Constructing any facility in a coastal area may severely affect sediment transport and hydrodynamics conditions of the area [3]; hence, affecting processes and issues which are investigated analytically. Subsequently, critical criteria in decision making are determined andweighted based on their relative importance in order to establish the decision support system. In order to evaluate functionality of the adopted methodology and obtain a better understanding ofthe pertinent matters, Neka located on the northern shores of Iran by the Caspian Sea and itspresent problems rooted in the lack of a holistic approach to planning shore-based facilities (Fig. 1) are treated as a case study for which some initially derived management strategies are presented in this article.

Keywords:

Decision , ICZM , Erosion , Economics , Environment , Neka