elbfox
commented
5 years ago Text to be added:
### Step 1: Start Here Welcome to the Dam Decision Support Tool! Please login with a username (email address) and a password.
Are you entering (a) individual or (b) group preference information? (Select one).
Picture here
This free and open source tool was developed to aid people like you in considering tradeoffs associated with dams. It can help support getting involved in decision making about hydropower dams licensed through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), but could easily be tailored toward other types of dam decisions. The tool generates a data-driven recommendation for hydropower dams in Maine’s Penobscot River, based on user preferences, to support your interaction in the FERC Integrated Licensing Process.
This tool is based on the Weighted Sum approach to Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to compare decision-maker preferences for decision criteria (e.g., annuitized cost, greenhouse gas emissions reductions, sea-run fish survival, etc.) for hydropower dams with upcoming FERC license expiration dates. The tool gathers user inputs and calculates a ranked set of decision alternatives (e.g. keep and maintain dam, improve hydropower generation, improve fish passage) for each dam. Then, tool optimizes across the set of dams coming up for relicensing to suggest a coordinated dam decision.
More Information The Penobscot River is home to many dams and valuable ecosystem services, including pristine natural lakes, clean water sources, and significant biodiversity, including several sea-run fish species (e.g. Atlantic salmon, American eel, Blueback herring, and Alewife). Dams also provide important services: reservoirs for drinking water and recreation, flood protection, and generation of reliable, on-demand renewable hydropower, critical to reducing emissions that contribute to climate change and poor human health. However, all dams need regular maintenance and older dams may need more extensive repairs as they age. Dams may interrupt flows and prevent sea-run fish passage, contributing to large population declines. They may also contribute to poor water quality downstream, increased predation, and climate change. Dams have long threatened indigenous cultural traditions, while at the same time helping to shape post-industrial town or city identities over the last two centuries.
Instructions for Uploading Group Preferences Use this option only if you have done this activity before and have used the blank decision matrix HERE to organize your data. Press the UPLOAD button, and select the appropriate .xlsx or .csv file to upload the preference values for you or the average preference values for your group.
Change title of page (currently called "Start Here") to "Step 1: Start Here"; Rewrite introduction to be more colloquial or personal to the user; Write about how MCDA can be used for FERC dams; add picture; add place for user to login; add question about whether they are entering individual or group preferences; add instructions for pre-loading saved preferences (group or individual).
This app design is intended to build on existing http://shiny.gsscdev.com/dams_mcda/. The overal "Dam Decision Support Tool" title will remain the same, but the navigation bar changes will differ. The major difference is the individual/group capability, the switch from decision alternative tabs to dam tabs, and the addition of dam-by-dam results tabs for dam-specific graphs and tables.