Weighting Scoring Systems

After analyzing potential impacts of different openspace scoring systems, it was evident that weighting specific resources does not have a significant impact on the scoring system unless the weights given to resources are extremely different.

Despite the initial goal of protecting the most resources possible, it is desirable to create policies that will give special consideration to resources of importance. The usual way of approaching this is to weigh different resources to differently in the scoring system.

The analysis of the differences between the rate in which resources are protected shows that the different weights given to resources in this study did not make a noticeable difference in the parcels that were protected. This shows a lack of sensitivity to prioritization in the scoring systems. Despite the fact that certain resources where given more weight, these resources were not necessarily protected to a greater degree.

This is most likely due to the large amount of co-occurring resources in Charlestown. On average there are 5.5 resources on each parcel out of 14 analyzed. This high level of co-occurance minimizes the impact that any one resource can have on the total number of points that it receives. More discussion of this attribute of the scoring system is discussed in the analysis of the difference between the two scoring systems analyzed in this study.

In order to design effective policies to weight resources, one must first understand how weighting will change the order in which parcels are ranked. Only then can a policy be created that reflects the values of those creating it when applied to specific parcels. In the case of Charlestown, to design a system that protects one resource to a greater degree then the other resources considered, the weighting systems would have to be significantly restructured, giving that resource the majority of the possible points.