What is Process Modeling

Environmental decision making has to deal with trade-offs between social, political, environmental, and economic impacts, with different stakeholders' views, which rely on expert knowledge and expertise. This chapter describes how such environmental decision processes can be explored, analyzed, documented, and formalized. Decisions in this problem area depend notably on expertise and experience acquired by all involved decision makers. In this chapter, a collaborative approach is developed and applied that integrates the stakeholders as a partner into the modeling process. After the decision process is documented using the card game CUTA4BPM, all information, which leads up to a decision, will be collected, systemized, and grouped using supplementary paper cards. The outcome of this modeling leads to a formalized model of the decision process. On account of this approach, the real decision process is modeled and increases trust in the decisions suggested by a decision support system later on. This collaborative approach is evaluated by a case study in crop planning.