Title: Making Tough Decisions: Interacting with Stakeholders to Advance Many Objective Decision 
Support

Abstract: In recent years, there has been an increasing number of calls for improved decision 
support to aid in responding to climate change, extreme events, and population growth.  For 
example, in water management, the observance of changing extremes (floods, droughts) has required 
modifications of management strategies and, in some cases, the construction of new 
infrastructure.  Another example is decision making for new and existing buildings on how to 
respond to multiple natural hazards while considering sustainability.  While Multiobjective 
Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) have shown promise in research applications, they have only been 
recently employed to assist decision making for large public sector systems.  Of particular 
interest is the problem formulation: objectives that measure performance; management options that 
decision makers can change; constraints that represent acceptable limits for performance; and 
selection of an appropriate simulation model to represent the water infrastructure system.  Key 
questions include how to co-produce problem formulations in collaboration with stakeholders, as 
well as how the problem formulations impact MOEAs' ability to efficiently and reliably solve 
problems.

This presentation will give some examples of how to create problem formulations for MOEA-based 
decision support to aid real-world decision making in multiple problem domains.  Results for 
multi-reservoir regional planning for the Tarrant Regional Water District in Texas demonstrate 
how evolving problem formulations can help managers gain better insights into the operation of 
their system and potentially increase the efficiency of providing water given hydrologic 
uncertainty.  I will also discuss new research within our group that seeks to co-produce a 
multi-objective test bed to aid water management in Colorado's Front Range, being performed in 
concert with researchers at CU's Western Water Assessment.