Overview
People with a stake in land use decision-making including natural resources management groups, agricultural scientists, policy makers and land management researchers, often need to access and analyse large amounts of environmental, social and economic information. MCAS-S provides a powerful tool for spatial information assessment, conveying complex information in a readily understood manner.
MCAS-S
The Multi-Criteria Analysis Shell for Spatial Decision Support (MCAS-S) is a software tool developed by the Bureau of Rural Sciences that brings the multi-criteria analysis (MCA) process into the decision-makers' realm. It is an easy-to-use, flexible tool that promotes:
- insightful desktop combination and study of different types of mapped information
- understanding of the relationships between the decision-making process and the available spatial data
- interactive 'live-update' and mapping of alternative project scenarios
GIS (geographic information systems) programming is not required, removing the usual technical obstacles to non-GIS users.
Who can use MCAS-S?
Managers, policy-makers and land management researchers at the national, state and local level involved in land resource evaluation and decision-making will find MCAS-S a helpful tool, particularly those working with spatial data with limited GIS support.
MCAS-S can assist in participatory processes and workshop situations where a clear understanding of varying approaches to spatial data management and information arrangement is necessary. Stakeholders can see the potential impacts that their decisions may make.
What has it been used for?
MCAS-S is the latest of several MCA decision aids used in the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry policy environment since the early 1990s. MCAS-S is currently being used at the national, regional and catchment scale for:
- Great Barrier Reef water quality – informing investment under the Caring for our Country Reef Rescue Initiative to improve water quality in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon through improved agricultural land management practices
- Wind and Water Erosion – prioritising areas affected by or at risk of wind and water erosion for the Caring for our Country business plan
- Invasive species risk assessments – informing biosecurity risk assessment processes by overlaying ecological data with potential distributions of invasive species based on climate niche modelling outputs
Natural Resources Mapping Toolkit
The Natural Resources Mapping Toolkit is a convenient package combining the functions of MCAS-S version 2.1 with Australian national map layers relevant to natural resources evaluation.
Publications
Lesslie, R.G., Hill, M.J., Hill, P., Cresswell, H.P. and Dawson, S. (2008) The Application of a Simple Spatial Multi-Criteria Analysis Shell to Natural Resource Management Decision Making [PDF 1.9mb], in Landscape Analysis and Visualisation:Spatial Models for Natural Resource Management and Planning, (Eds. Pettit, C., Cartwright, W., Bishop, I., Lowell, K., Pullar, D. and Duncan, D.), Springer, Berlin, pp 73–96. With kind permission of Springer Science + Business Media.
Lesslie, R. and Cresswell, H. (2008) Mapping priorities: Planning re-vegetation in southern NSW using a new decision-support tool. Thinking Bush [PDF 776kb], October 2008, 7:30-33.