Silvicultural planning and decision-making is often based on vaguely structured information. In many cases, there are multiple purposes to be considered and multiple stakeholders to be integrated in the process of forest management. When stand conditions are widely varying and prognosis about their future development is subject to a high degree of uncertainty decision-making in forest management will become even more complex. The selection of a management option that is to serve both the objectives of the forest owner and the principles of sustainable forest management is far beyond from being trivial. An increasing number of decision criteria and changing frame conditions would consequently lead to excessive demands on a forest manager in conventional decision-making. The use of decision support systems (DSS) and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are designed to support forest managers in planning and decision-making processes.
