And Compass is recognized worldwide for both developing the methods and applying them to the messy, multi-stakeholder world of environmental and resource management.

Structured decision making, or SDM, is an organized approach to developing and evaluating creative alternatives and making defensible choices. It's particularly useful for helping groups work productively together on decisions marked by technical uncertainty and controversial trade-offs.  At the core of SDM is the idea that it is possible and necessary to create a deliberative environment that deals rigorously with both facts and values in decision making.

Structured decision making involves:

• clearly defining the problem and the decision to be made;
• setting clear objectives and measures of performance;
• developing a range of creative alternatives;
• evaluating the performance of the alternatives and identifying key trade-offs;
• assessing risk and uncertainty and the implications for the decision;
• understanding the values of the people and organizations affected by the decision - the importance they assign to different kinds of outcomes; and
• making explicit and transparent choices

We use a variety of tools and techniques to help clients structure decisions, develop and evaluate alternatives, and elicit the preferences of different stakeholders and decision makers.

For more information on our SDM tools and techniques, please visit our SDM website.