A non-linear decision making process for public involvement in environmental management activities

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:178053

Harper, M R; Kastenberg, W

The international industrial and governmental institutions involved in radioactive waste management and environmental remediation are now entering a new era in which they must significantly expand public involvement. Thus the decision making processes formerly utilized to direct and guide these institutions must now be shifted to take into consideration the needs of many more stakeholders than ever before. To meet this challenge, they now have the job of developing and creating a new set of accurate, sufficient and continuous self-regulating and self-correcting information pathways between themselves and the many divergent stakeholder groups in order to establish sustainable, trusting and respectful relationships. In this paper the authors introduce a new set of non-linear, practical and effective strategies for interaction. These self-regulating strategies provide timely feedback to a system, establishing trust and creating a viable vehicle for staying open and responsive to the needs out of which change and balanced adaptation can continually emerge for all stakeholders. The authors present a decision making process for public involvement which is congruent with the non-linear ideas of holographic and fractal relationships -- the mutual influence between related parts of the whole and the self-symmetry of systems at every level of complexity.

• OSTI ID: 178053
• Report Number(s): CONF-950917--; ISBN 0-7918-1219-7
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

05 NUCLEAR FUELS
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
ATTITUDES
HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
PUBLIC OPINION
PUBLIC RELATIONS
RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT
REMEDIAL ACTION
RISK ASSESSMENT