An Approach to Developing the Multicriteria Optimal Forest Management Plan: The Fruska Gora National Park Case Study

This paper proposes a decision-making framework that integrates Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), Best-Worst (BW), and Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) methods in a forestry management problem. Namely, the application of the proposed framework has been shown in the case study area of the National Park Fruska Gora in Serbia. The decision-making problem included five criteria (biodiversity protection, wilderness protection, promotion of tourism, promotion of education function, and sustainable use of natural resources) and four alternatives-management plans (business as usual, eco-tourism, protection of natural ecosystems and use of natural resources). The results were focused on proclaiming a winning alternative in a multi-criteria context and have been tested for the different risk attitudes: risk-prone, risk-neutral, and risk-averse. For the risk-prone scenario, the winning alternative was protection of natural ecosystems, while the risk-neutral and risk-averse scenarios recognized eco-tourism as the winning alternative. The same procedure can be repeated for many other forest management tasks that require multiple criteria setting and risk attitude analysis.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a decision-making framework that integrates DEMATEL, BW, and OWA methods for a forestry management problem. The framework was applied in a case study of the National Park Fruska Gora in Serbia. The results identified the winning alternative in a multi-criteria context and tested different risk attitudes.