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Title:	User's Manual for the Evaluation and Sensitivity Analysis Program (ESAP)
Authors:	Mumpower, Jeryl, 1949- Bollacker, Lee. University of Colorado. Institute of Behavioral Science Environmental Laboratory (U.S.)
Keywords:	Alternative evaluation Environmental analysis Environmental impact Environmental assessment Environmental evaluation Impact assessment Sensitivity analysis Weighting-scaling Water resources development Evaluation and Sensitivity Analysis Program ESAP
Publisher:	U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station
Series/Report no.:	Technical report (U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station) ; no. E-81-4
Abstract:	The Evaluation and Sensitivity Analysis Program (ESAP) is an environmental planning technique for the evaluation of alternative water resource management plans. ESAP is based on a weighting-scaling approach to impact assessment and alternative evaluation. The evaluation of the desirability or acceptability of an alternative is based on a systematic combination of information about the impacts on the natural and cultural resources and information about the importance (weight) and preferred levels of such resources. Information for a number of individuals or groups is used to determine how sensitive their evaluations are to differences in judgments about the importance and preferred levels of resources or to uncertainty in projections of resource impacts. The analysis performed by ESAP provides the user with two basic types of information: (A.) an evaluation of alternatives for each individual or group considered and (B.) an analysis of how the individuals or groups differ in their evaluation of alternatives. The analysis requires the user to provide a hierarchical description of the evaluation problem, which includes the variables or resources affected by the alternatives, projected levels of the variables or resources for each of the alternatives, and information about the weights or importance values and the variables for each of the groups under consideration. If the user wishes to examine the effects of uncertainty on evaluation, data describing uncertainty must also be input into the program. The evaluation procedures evaluate the alternatives for one group at a time. The evaluation systematically combines the groups' judgments on the weights or importance and preferred levels for resources with projections for each of the alternatives. These two pieces of information for each variable or resource are combined to form an overall evaluation score that expresses the desirability or acceptability of each alternative. The different types of output from the evaluation allow the user to determine how the public group evaluates the alternatives, the difference between alternatives in the overall evaluation, and which variables are most important in the evaluation and, conversely, which variables contribute relatively little to discriminating between the acceptability of alternatives for that group. The evaluation of alternatives can be based on either the projected resource levels or on resource projections in conjunction with data describing the uncertainty about the projections. The second type of analysis can provide the basis for determining how groups differ in their evaluation as well as the effect of uncertainty of resource projections on alternative evaluation. The procedures that compare groups allow the user to determine which alternatives are most acceptable to which public group, which resources or variables are responsible for the greatest difference in evaluation across all groups for all alternatives, and how pairs of groups differ in their overall evaluation and their evaluation of each variable or resource being considered. NOTE: This file is large. Allow your browser several minutes to download the file
Description:	Technical Report
Gov't Doc #:	Technical Report E-81-4
Rights:	Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/11681/4502
Size:	285 pages / 9.871Mb 285 pages / 9.871Mb
Types of Materials:	PDF/A
Appears in Collections:	Technical Report