I am very impressed with the science, but how do we visualize/ communicate this in an understandable form to policy & decision makers? Multi-dimensional spaces are not easy to understand for non-scientists. Do you have an example where you have used this approach already in a real policy decision making example and how did you go about it?
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#1
The slide that I showed about bioenergy - food- water quality - water quantity trade-off, was something that we discussed with regional agencies. You’re absolutely right, it is very hard to show four-dimensional or even higher dimensional solutions. We used a hierarchical approach, zooming into specific parts of a cluster analysis. In regions that have relatively delivery of particular services such as food provisioning, bioenergy or specific sets of values then stakeholders would focus on that aspect and not consider others. Another approach which I haven’t used personally but colleagues of mine have used this to come up with preferential objectives. So in many situations people may be able to say, “it is all important but there are two or three objectives of most concern.”