Abstract
Most environmental programs are based on the selection of proposed management activities which we will here refer to as projects. Most frequently, the total cost of project proposals exceeds available program budgets. This forces a project selection where the selection process is usually aimed to maximise the total benefits whilst it is necessary to stay within a given budget. A common selection practice is the sorting of projects along their utility or benefit score and selecting projects until the budget constraint binds. However this practise implies no further combinatorial effort; projects are simply selected from top to bottom. The combinatorial problem of finding an optimal combination of projects subject to constraint is a binary problem which is known in operations research as the knapsack problem (KP). Here a multi criteria knapsack solution which combines multi criteria analysis with a subsequent combinatorial optimization technique is applied to determine a portfolio of projects that returns a maximum aggregated benefit subject to a budget constraint. To facilitate the application of the applied methods, the multi-criteria analysis tool (MCAT) has been developed. We illustrate the use of the MCAT through a waterway health management case study in Western Australia.
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The development of MCAT has been funded by the e-Water co-operative research centre (eWaterCRC).
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Marinoni, O., Higgins, A., Hajkowicz, S. (2010). A Multi Criteria Knapsack Solution to Optimise Natural Resource Management Project Selection. In: Ehrgott, M., Naujoks, B., Stewart, T., Wallenius, J. (eds) Multiple Criteria Decision Making for Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, vol 634. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04045-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04045-0_5
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