A survey of integrated decision analysis in energy and environmental modeling

The 1995 survey on DA (decision analysis) in energy and environmental modeling by Huang et al. [1] listed 95 publications; later Zhou et al. [2] updated the survey with 252 publications by classifying the studies according to source of publications, DA method, application area, and several new attributes. As multiple criteria decision-making is a specific perspective to deal with decision problems in energy-related environmental studies with the rapid changes and the increasing complexity of the energy issues, DA techniques have been extended to further methodological developments. This paper aims at illustrating the evolution of DA techniques involved in energy and environmental decision situations. Earlier surveys are extended and refined by classifying and comparing the DA techniques used in 115 energy and environmental studies. It was found that there is increasing importance placed on DA methods, and energy and environmental studies had increased substantially in last ten years. The paper also defines the integrated decision analysis and describes its new developments used in energy and environmental modeling.