Environmental protection zones priorization for the decision making support
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Date
2013-10-26
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Corporación Universitaria Lasallista
Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá
Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá
Abstract
Introduction. Air quality assessment deal with emission, concentration levels and definition
of polluted areas, the results are often related with command and control regulations or
restriction to transportation and industrial activities. This kind of approaches gives to environmental
and territorial planners areas for special management and use. Objectives. Facilitate
the priorization of those polluted areas in terms of future interventions to decision makers,
integrating public health and demographic indicators to a previous planning exercise through,
an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach. Materials and methods. With an AHP developed
via surveys for territorial and environmental planning experts, it was possible to define
the importance weight and relevance of new indicators in the decision making exercise of
prioritization of polluted areas in Medellin. The indicators were chosen from public databases
of demographic and public health information and one of them (demographic) with a prospective
time frame. Results. Experts in territorial planning tends to give more importance to
health indicators for the prioritization of intervention in polluted areas, while the inclusion of
a prospective indicator was useful in the definition of which of the areas should be the first or the most critical for intervention. The results also show that experts seem to have problems in structuring their
decisions presenting some inconsistencies in their answers. Conclusion. We present clear cut results showing
that the inclusion of new variables, especially those dealing with prospective information in previous air quality
planning exercise is useful for the strategic decision making process.
Description
Keywords
Corporación Universitaria Lasallista, Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá, Calidad del aire, Contaminación, Contaminación del aire, Protección del medio ambiente