Design of a Transactional Environmental Support System

This chapter draws on results from previous chapters, in some cases creating new syntheses by combining information across chapters and including findings of previous projects. Its specific objective is to consolidate all these findings in the design of a system to support transaction of information for environmental assessments and decision support at central and local levels, by local managers of land and species as well as by policymakers. It recognises the need not merely to provide a technological tool, but also to consider demand and supply for information in that tool, the ease of use of the tool, motivation to use the tool and cost of maintaining the tool long-term: a tool that is not desirable, practical, and durable will not last. The chapter therefore first addresses who makes the most decisions, finding not only that local managers of land and species have high need of support, but also that their demand is least met by model-based decision support despite their high capacity to generate data. For this reason a system was designed primarily to accommodate needs of knowledge transfer at local level. Consideration of data quality, ownership, and confidentiality was important, together with scale, uncertainty (and resulting liability) of resulting decision support. All these considerations can be addressed by developing trust in operation of such a system, for which a basis in the civic sector (rather than in private business or government) was recommended. A portal was launched to continue informing all interests of the scope for building and opportunities from use of such a system.