WORTHY: a new model for ecological ranking and evaluation

Ecological ranking and environmental decision making require that a set of “objects” (e.g., competing sites for species introduction, or alternative sites for the allocation of man-made features) are listed from the best to the worst one. The resulting ranking is then used to choose which actions to implement; worse and intermediate solutions are immediately excluded, while optimal and sub-optimal solutions are taken into account, discussed and then applied. In this paper, WORTHY is presented as a new model for ecological ranking and evaluation of competing alternatives based on a set of weighted criteria. I have developed WORTHY model with the goal of employing a TOPSIS-like algorithm for worthy solutions in situations of environmental and ecological conflict management. Compared to TOPSIS algorithm, WORTHY allows to: a) decide the type of normalization, b) build an user-defined decision function, c) perform what-if analysis and d) sensitivity analysis.