Structured Decision Making (SDM)

Flowchart illustrating decision-making process, starting with a problem triggered by mandates, leading to objectives, alternatives, consequences, trade-offs, and actions.
Figure 4.3. The steps and cycle for conducting the Structured Decision-Making process. Figure modified from Runge (2011).

The U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have worked together to adapt areas of decision science for natural resource management. The result, Structured Decision Making (SDM), is based on the PrOACT (Problem, Objectives, Alternatives, Consequences, Tradeoffs) model; it is a transparent, collaborative process for navigating complex management problems involving multiple stakeholders and/or shared governance. It can incorporate expert elicitation or sophisticated quantitative performance models to predict, evaluate, and compare consequences across a suite of objectives and alternatives (e.g., multi-criteria decision analysis tools). Although not designed specifically for the context of climate change, the issues that arise in the context of climate adaptation, including multiple objectives, uncertainty, risk, and complex predictive models, are readily incorporated into SDM.

The benefits of SDM are that the thorough and well-articulated process results in a transparent output that can clearly show how a decision was made, and thus reduces conflict as well as some biases. Documentation of the process facilitates transparency and allows decisions made at each step to be revisited and reconsidered as needed as desirable or undesirable outcomes unfold. Drawbacks of SDM are that it can be time and knowledge intensive. However, trainings or an outside partner can help reduce those barriers. For a further discussion of SDM see Chapter 4 of the Climate Change Synthesis Report (TCI & NEFWDTC, 2023a).

There is an introductory online course: Structured Decision Making – Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit Spreadsheet and R Project (uvm.edu) and more information through the National Conservation and Training Center https://trainingcenter.fws.gov/courses/pr….

Table 4.5. A list of recent examples of implementing the SDM in the Northeast or adjacentregions for natural-resource management.

Topic 

Case study 

Citation 

Coastal species harvesting 

Horseshoe Crab harvesting in Delaware Bay 

McGowan et al. 2020 

Coastal wetland management 

Delaware wetlands and coastal infrastructure 

Lyons et al. 2020 

High-elevation species protection 

Looking for optimal management options for the Shenandoah Salamander 

Grant et al. 2014 

References

Adapted from

Staudinger, M.D., A.V. Karmalkar, K. Terwilliger, K. Burgio, A. Lubeck, H. Higgins, T. Rice, T.L. Morelli, A. D'Amato. 2024. A regional synthesis of climate data to inform the 2025 State Wildlife Action Plans in the Northeast U.S. DOI Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center Cooperator Report. 406 p. https://doi.org/10.21429/t352-9q86

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