Lessons from applications of structured modeling to solving complex policy-making problems

Making rational policy decisions for complex environmental problems typically requires comprehensive analyses of relations between decisions and various measures of the consequences resulting from their implementations. Such relations can be represented by various mathematical models, each having an infinite number of solutions of the decision problem. An efficient model-based decision-making support needs an appropriate modeling technology. This paper summarizes the lessons for long-term applications of advanced modeling techniques to complex environmental problems, and outlines the SMT (structured modeling technology), which has been developed for model-based decision-making support for such problems.