Analytical Planning: The Organization of Systems deals with systems and planning and suggests a methodological tool for integrating the two. This book presents the basic ideas behind complexity, systems, hierarchies, and prioritization and describes planning as a unique form of decision making with illustrations of some prominent philosophical and methodological approaches. It highlights some shortcomings of traditional approaches to planning and shows how these can be addressed by the systems approach. This monograph consists of seven chapters and opens with a discussion on the nature of complexity and describes an approach that facilitates the use of creativity and experience to structure complex problems. The next chapter explains the rationale for systems thinking and how reductionism works. The Analytic Hierarchy Process is then considered, along with its relationship to some of the properties of systems. The remaining chapters focus on ways of thinking about planning and philosophies of planning; strategic planning; and the applicability of the Analytic Hierarchy Process to benefit-cost analysis and resource allocation. This book is intended for managers, decision makers, and planners, as well as researchers and practitioners in applied mathematics and computer science.

Analytical Methods and Approaches for Water Resources Project Planningis part of a larger study that was conducted in response to a request from the U.S. Congress in the Water Resources Development Act of 2000 for the National Academy of Sciences to review the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer's peer review methods and analytical approaches. This report reviews the Corps' analytical procedures and planning methods, largely in the context of the federal Economic and Environmental Principles and Guidelines for Water and Related Land Resources Implementation Studies, also known as the Principles and Guidelines or "P and G" (P&G), as well as the Corps' Planning Guidance Notebook (PGN).

This book presents applications of the Analytic Hierarchy Process developed by Thomas L. Saaty to deal with unstructured decision problems, together with case histories developed by him and in collaboration with others in areas of current societal concern. Its purpose is to provide the reader with examples of how to deal with unstructured problems, particularly ones involving socio economic and political issues with qualitative and intangible factors. These examples show how to use judgment and experience to analyze a com plex decision problem by combining its qualitative and quantitative aspects in a single framework and generating a set of priorities for alternative courses of action. The process has inherent flexibilities in structuring a problem and in taking diverse judgments from people, whether singly, in a group working together, or by questionnaire. Decisionmakers will profit from this approach. It makes accessible to them a framework for understanding the complexity of the system they are in as it impinges on the surrounding environment. To deal with complexity, we must first understand it. Systems thinking is necessary if all the important factors are to be considered. Complex systems problems can challenge and tax our logical capability to fully understand their causes and the consequences of any action we may take to solve them. Neverthe less, in time their effects on us tend to become better known than their causes.

Updated in its 3rd edition, Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning presents quickly applied methods for analyzing and resolving planning and policy issues at state, regional, and urban levels. Divided into two parts, Methods which presents quick methods in nine chapters and is organized around the steps in the policy analysis process, and Cases which presents seven policy cases, ranging in degree of complexity, the text provides readers with the resources they need for effective policy planning and analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are systematically combined to address policy dilemmas and urban planning problems. Readers and analysts utilizing this text gain comprehensive skills and background needed to impact public policy.

The Analytic Network Process (ANP), developed by Thomas Saaty in his work on multicriteria decision making, applies network structures with dependence and feedback to complex decision making. This new edition of Decision Making with the Analytic Network Process is a selection of the latest applications of ANP to economic, social and political decisions, and also to technological design. The ANP is a methodological tool that is helpful to organize knowledge and thinking, elicit judgments registered in both in memory and in feelings, quantify the judgments and derive priorities from them, and finally synthesize these diverse priorities into a single mathematically and logically justifiable overall outcome. In the process of deriving this outcome, the ANP also allows for the representation and synthesis of diverse opinions in the midst of discussion and debate. The book focuses on the application of the ANP in three different areas: economics, the social sciences and the linking of measurement with human values. Economists can use the ANP for an alternate approach for dealing with economic problems than the usual mathematical models on which economics bases its quantitative thinking. For psychologists, sociologists and political scientists, the ANP offers the methodology they have sought for some time to quantify and derive measurements for intangibles. Finally the book applies the ANP to provide people in the physical and engineering sciences with a quantitative method to link hard measurement to human values. In such a process, one is able to interpret the true meaning of measurements made on a uniform scale using a unit.

This book is a comprehensive summary, primarily of the author's own thinking and research, about the Analytic Hierarchy Process and decision making. It includes advanced mathematical theory and diverse applications. Fundamentals of Decision Making has all the latest theoretical developments in the AHP and new theoretical material not published elsewhere. We consider this book to be the replacement for the original book on the subject, The Analytic Hierarchy Process that was published by McGraw Hill Publishers, New York.