A weighted goal programming approach for planning regional development: A case study of Queensland, Australia

In Queensland, Australia, an Economic Impact Assessment (EcIA) is an important part of the approval process for major projects. Majority of EcIAs are conducted under a presumption that the projects are bringing positive values to the economy only on the basis of additional royalties, output, employment and income. EcIA does not usually provide detailed understanding of the trade-offs associated with competing development goals. While Queensland economic development relies on the future growth of coal mining industries, the benefits to regional communities might be hindered by many different environmental impacts related to coal mining activities including the impacts of ecosystem service. However, a decision situation for the approval process for major projects can described by multiple and conflicting goals including environmental impacts, such as land use, employment opportunity, and income. Goal programming is also known as multi-objective optimisation, which is classified as one of the commonly used in multi-criteria decision analysis. In this paper, we propose a goal-programming model to handle practical example with different trade-off scenarios in coal mining industries and to evaluate ecosystem service. In the proposed model, we introduced the deviation variables and weight into the conflicting objectives from policy makers’ perspective for evaluation purpose. Our proposed model can aid decision makers to achieve effective strategic planning.