Enhancing territorial resilience assessment with a decision-aiding model in regional planning of Socio-Ecological Systems

Resilient regional development can be favoured employing suitable decision-aiding techniques. Multicriteria Sorting Analysis tools are increasingly being used to deal with complex issues. The Group Analytic Network Process Sorting II method (GANPSort II), which builds on the previous ANPSort II and I, is here developed for the territorial resilience assessment of the Champagne-Ardenne in France, a broad-level Socio-Ecological System. This method can sort a large number of alternatives from the most to the least resilient by reducing the number of pairwise comparisons. In this way, an adaptive response can be provided to system perturbations. The evaluation is supported by cognitive and spatial analyses and allowed the definition of a set of resilience indicators as components of the evaluation model. A pool of multidisciplinary experts joined the evaluation to sort the alternatives into specific resilience classes. GIS completion facilitates the outcomes visualization of both solo and grouped expert sorting. The results demonstrate that the GANPSort II enriches the existing sorting methods scenario in handling planning problems, such as territorial resilience assessment in the regional planning of broad systems, proving its decision-making utility for spatial planners and public bodies engaged in the co-design of resilient strategies.