Multiple objective decision making for ''Lokahi'' (Balance) in environmental management

Innovative advances and applications in multiple objective decision-making (MODM) contained in the upcoming set of papers published in this special issue of Applied Mathematics and Computation are summarized, assessed, and compared with regard to their usefulness for tackling complex problems in environmental management. Since many of the MODM methods and associated decision support systems used in environmental management originate from the field of operations research (OR), techniques from OR are categorized with respect to their abilities to handle multiple objectives and multiple decision makers. The applications presented in the forthcoming papers clearly demonstrate that a range of OR and other scientific methods are usually required for properly modelling, analyzing, and solving real-world environmental management problems. (C) Elsevier Science Inc., 1997.