A systems approach to policy planning: An application to solid waste

The purpose of this thesis is to present a decision support and planning tool for large, multi-facility, multi-modal, multi-stakeholder, and multi-criteria systems. The model, named Multiple Attribute Decision System (MADS), is composed of two modules--an evaluation module and a policy development module. In addition to using customary model making tools, a genetic algorithm (GA) is employed to create alternative system designs in the development module. To our knowledge, this is the first instance of applying a GA to the development of alternative courses of action in the planning field. Using the GA for such an application expands the decision making process into one of planning.; In addition, it is asserted that the novel use of the GA methodology introduced in this thesis extends the capabilities of models that evaluate the performance and consequences of existing systems to include for planning for the future of those systems. The claim that the model constructed for this thesis is a planning model implies that it can address problems for which neither the physical configuration nor the operational organization of the system is fixed at the planning stage of decision making. In such a situation, a planner must find an approach that enables her to fix on a particular satisfying design. The GA is implemented to provide an analytical technique for constructing such designs. The planning tool that emerges from this work can be used by decision-makers to evaluate tradeoffs of policy alternatives prior to implementation of any one policy.; The emphasis in this research is on the methodology. However, sufficient information is presented for a particular case study to exhibit the utility of the proposed methodology in the context of a specific application. A solid waste management system is used as a case study, and it is shown that the model is applicable to all systems that satisfy the general properties that a solid waste management system has--even though those other systems may not be waste related entities.