FLOOD09697

• County: Statewide
• Community: Nationwide
• Basin: Statewide
• Title: Mathematical Modeling of a Sociological and Hydrologic Decision System
• Date: 6/1/1978
• Prepared By: Institute for Social Science Research on Natural Resources, Utah State Univ.
• Floodplain - Doc Type: Educational/Technical/Reference Information

the values of ageucy variables to create separate equa.
tious for the differeul agencies. Each of the coeffici.
ents ill Ihe case of terms of Types III and IV would
be equal to the product of a coefficieut ill Equatiou
III and the appropriate value of the parameters of the
agency which are in the equation. This procedure,
however, is applicable only to the nonstandardized
form of the equation because the transformation re-
quired for the standardized form is on the product of
the variables ill the interaction lerms and there is no
way to separate the effects of the Iransformations on
the respective variables without cousiderable informa.
tion on the distributions of the variabies iuvoived. The
use of means always distorts the equatiou from the
results with direct calibration. Therefore, the derived
equations should be considered approximations.

In spite of the difficullies caused by limited dala
and approximate procedures, the results appeared ade.
quate. The coefficients and signs of the agency equa.
tions may not be slable because of the data base prob.
lem;however, four of the flve acceptance functions
ill Equation III reiate in the way one would expect
to the dependeut variable. The measures of agreemeut,
the r squares, for the evaluation equations were rea-
sonably high. For the purposes of system simulatiou,
the developed equations seem to work fairly well.

Construction of agency equations

The coefficients of the agency equations are
calibrated from data reflecting a judgment of the agen.
cy evaluation of a flood conlrol proposal and estimates
from engineering data and experl judges of the char.
acteristics of these proposals. The mean values of the
agency characteristics used for calibration are shown
in Table 5.4, and the means and ranges of the other
variables are listed in Table 5.5. The set of data used
to establish the agency regression equations consisted
of the values estimaled by a judge for variables XI

Table 5.4. Mean values for agency variables in Equa-
tions III, IV, and Vl".

Planning Decision
Variableb Agency Agency
IACCOS (X2) 1.750 3.250
IACEFF eX3) 3.750 2.875
IACAES (X4) 0.625 2.125
IACREC (X5) 0.625 2.000
IACECO (X6) 0.500 1.625
AGEAGE (X7) 1.800 2.000
PUBAGE (X8) 2.300 3.800

alndividual values were used in calibration (See text).
hvariable labels are taken from Table 5.2.
Ofhe decision, planning, and implementation agencies may be
the same agency in the real world. This is explained in Chapter
IV.

Table 5.5. Mean values and range of proposal char.
acteristics (X9 - X/4) and other variables
used in calibrating Equations III, IVand
Vi

Variablea Mean Value Score Range
BECORA (X9)b 3.89 0.08 to 9.58
COSPRO (XIO)C 20.23 (X 106) 181.0 (X 106) to
22.10 (X 106)
A VEBEN (X l1)C 100.0 (X 104) 14.8 (X 104) to
196.7 (X 104)
OJEAES (X 12) ..223 -2.17 to 1.67
OJEREC (X 13) ..053 -2.33 to 2.50
OJEECO (X 14) -.223 -2.17 to 1.83
IFPROB (XI) 4.50 3.00 to 6.00
OTHEVE (XIS) 3.87 1.50 to 4.83
PUB PRO (XI6) 3.83 2.85 to 4.51

aYariable labels are taken from Table 5.2.

bComputed within computer model from other variables (see
Chapter VI).

cSignificant figures are those not in parentheses. Only these
were entered into computer figures. The numbers in paren-
theses are provided to inform the reader of the amount of the
actual engineering estimates.

through X6, estimates by engineers XI 0 and XII for
the proposal involved; means of the judged values for
X7, X8> and XI2 to XIS for that proposal; and the
actual mean public evaluation of that proposal as esti.
maled from the sample taken ill Ihe second stage of
this study, X16. All but the first group are constant
from judge to judge for the same proposal and agency.

The values of characleristics of proposals and
of other group evaluations of a given proposal were
held constant partly because of two assumptions men.
tioned in Chapter IV. These are that agencies per.
ceive the characteristics of flood control plans "cor-
rectly" or faclually in Ihe way the designer does, and
that they were cognizant of public and other agency
attitudes toward the plan. The proposal characleris-
tics eslimated from engineering data (X9, XlO, XII)
and that derived from the populalion data (XI6) are
considered intrinsically stable for a proposal at a given
time. Pooling the results of the judges' estimales of
the remaining characteristics (XI2, Xl3> X14, XIS)
was done partly to help stabilize the values obtained.
As can be inferred from the values of variables X2 to
X6 ill Table 4.5 (all are divisible by one over the num.
ber of judges, in this case .125), integer values were
assigned by eight judges to these variables; this was
also true for variable XI. The values of X7 and X8
are based on four judgments. Six judges were used
for the remaining variables; X12, Xl3, X14, and XIS.
Another reason for using mean values when possible
was to reduce the effect of cognitive consistency dis-
cussed below. Mean values of all variables could not
be used, however, because this would not leave enough

67