Decision Support Tools to Inform Regional Economic Development Analysis and Strategy

Abstract

Decision making in regional economic development necessarily is multi-faceted, involving economic, social, environmental and political consideration. And the implementation of regional economic development strategy-plans typically will involve an interface with regional plans concerned with the provision of infrastructure and land to support economic activities. Thus the development of decision support systems (DSS) and associated analytical tools is important to enhance the regional economic development strategy planning and implementation processes. Fortunately there are several tools that have been developed to help decision makers, including those methods of regional economic analysis we have discussed in previous chapters, and these are dependent on having access to spatial information at various levels of scale.