Guidelines to design models assessing agricultural sustainability, based upon feedbacks from the DEXi decision support system

Abstract

New agricultural systems are required to satisfy societal expectations such as higher quantity and quality of agricultural products, reducing environmental impacts, and more jobs. However, identifying and implementing more suitable agricultural systems is difficult due to conflicting objectives and to the wide diversity of scientific disciplines required to solve agricultural issues. Therefore, designing models to assess the sustainability of agricultural systems requires multicriteria decision aid methods. The French agronomist community has recently developed 11 hierarchical and qualitative models to assess sustainability using the DEXi decision aid software. Here, we give guidelines to help designers to build their own specific models. First, we present the principles and applications of the DEXi software. Then, we provide guidance on the following steps of model designing: (1) initial analysis and planning of the design process, (2) selection and hierarchy of sustainability criteria, (3) indicator selection and building, (4) parameterization, (5) evaluation, and (6) model dissemination and uses. We then discuss advantages and drawbacks of this kind of modeling formalism, the role of a participatory approach, and the main properties to consider during the design process.

Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Horticultural Systems: A Multi-Criteria Evaluation Approach Applied in a Case Study in Mediterranean Conditions

“…DEXi was conceived in 1999, and its methodology has a long history of scientific, technical, and practical contributions [13,14,17,18], including the evaluation of the entire agricultural sustainability and decision making. The program differs from most conventional multi-attribute hierarchical decision modeling tools, since it uses symbolic qualitative attributes instead of numeric quantitative ones [13].…”

“…The program differs from most conventional multi-attribute hierarchical decision modeling tools, since it uses symbolic qualitative attributes instead of numeric quantitative ones [13]. The set of attributes is organized in a tree-like structure, pointing out the hierarchical nature of DEXi ( Figure 2).…”

“…In DEXi, the utility aggregation functions are defined by the "if-then" decision rules, e.g., if BA1 is "medium high" and if BA2 and BA3 are "high", then AA1 is "high" (Figure 2). Each utility function can be filled in manually or by using an approach assigning a weight to each attribute [13]. These weights are numbers that are normalized to the sum or maximum of 100, which define the contribution of the corresponding attribute to the final evaluation.…”

“…Furthermore, the team of decision analysts and experts in our field of interest decided the single value of the specific weight for each input attribute. Different authors widely studied and examined the indicators used in the evaluation of sustainability [13,15,21]. On the basis of these indicators, a group of 30 basic attributes were selected to define the environmental sustainability of the cultivation process.…”

“…One of the methodologies that can be adopted to evaluate the environmental sustainability of the agricultural practices is to assess the agronomic procedures as a typical decision-making problem, which could be managed by multi-criteria decision-aid methods [11,12]. These methods are generally used to assess decision alternatives [13] and/or different agricultural practices [14]. In a comparative review of the main types of multi-criteria decision-aid methods, Sadok et al [15] suggested that decision rule-based methods managing qualitative input information are particularly relevant to handle the multi-dimensional constraints of the entire sustainability assessment.…”