Decision Analysis Framing and Structuring Workshop
for Appalachian Trail Decision Support System
June 7-11, 2010, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
A week-long Decision Analysis Workshop, sponsored by the Eastern Energy Resources Team of
the USGS was held June 7-11, 2010, in Harpers Ferry, WV. The Workshop was focused on
framing and structuring an A.T. DSS envisioned as an end-product of this NASA-funded project.
This workshop brought together key subject matter experts, decision makers, and stakeholders
from Federal, State, and NGO agencies, who are and will be involved in significant land and
resource management decisions about the A.T., as well as those with expertise and experience
with the various databases that will be made available to support those decisions. The primary
purpose of the workshop was to identify a set of realistic and useful objectives for the planned
DSS, a comprehensive set of real-world decisions that can benefit from better and timely data,
and to identify the most useful information stream and products necessary for input to a practical
and useful DSS based on the data, information, and interpretations that the decision makers need.
The workshop identified decision-makers,
stakeholders, and their scope of decisions to
understand the range of decisions for which data
products from the A.T.-DSS may be useful, and
identified additional partners who could benefit
from the tool.
The workshop identified and described objectives
for representative decisions to help determine the
level of aggregation at which data and information
will be most relevant and useful to A.T.
management decision-making.
The workshop exercised example structuring and modeling to identify and illustrate potential
gaps between information that would be most helpful to decision-making.
The workshop helped identify a set of realistic and useful objectives for the planned DSS, a
comprehensive set of real-world decisions that can benefit from better and more timely data, and
to identify the most useful information stream and products necessary for input to a practical and
useful DSS based on the data, information, and interpretations that the decision makers need.
Among the potential follow-up actions from the workshop, it appeared that there was the most
interest in developing one or more “rapid prototype” examples of how the DSS, and in particular
how the remote sensing data, could be used to support a specific decision. The project team is
making efforts now to develop the prototype examples for demonstration purposes and
development of a DSS.
Glenn Holcomb, James Coleman and Marcia McNiff of the USGS organized and led the
workshop. Karen Jenni and Tim Niemann of the Jenni Consultant/Insight Decisions were the
facilitators of the workshop.
Workshop Participants
Name
Laura Belleville
Kelly Chadbourne
James Coleman
Fred Dieffenbach
Roland Duhaime
Glenn Holcomb
Karen Jenni
John Karish
Mike McHale
Marcia McNiff
Thomas Minney
Brian Mitchell
Forrest Molton
Tim Niemann
Steve Norman
Gordon Olsen
Casey Reese
Matt Robinson
Ken Stolte
Pamela Underhill
Y.Q. Wang
Ken Williams
Organization
Appalachian Trail Conservancy
USFWS National Wildlife Refuge System
USGS
NPS, Appalachian National Scenic Trail, Northeast
Temperate Network
University of Rhode Island
USGS
Insight Decisions
NPS, Northeast Region
USGS – Climate Effects Network
USGS, NBII
The Nature Conservancy
NPS, Northeast Temperate Network
NASA, Ames Research Center
Decision Applications
USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station
NPS, Shenandoah National Park
NPS, Appalachian National Scenic Trail
Appalachian Trail Conservancy
USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station
NPS, Appalachian National Scenic Trail
University of Rhode Island
USGS
Note
Facilitator
Called in
Facilitator
Several people called in from distance at the first day of the workshop but the names were
missing from the record.