complete agenda - Florida Department of Environmental Protection

ARC Summary August 13, 2010
formula with the 25 variables. Columns J through AC are basically the Florida Forever goals
and criteria columns.
Dr. Brock said he had spoken with Dr. Frederick about some people’s reluctance to play with
the formula. He directed ARC to look at the Calc Score tab on the screen and the weighting
factors in the yellow highlighted row. He said he came up with straw man of weighting factors
trying to balance factors across the board with a little sensitivity applied to how different
resources met targets in the Benchmarks report or when there was some overlap data used in
multiple formulas; that is, if multiple formulas factored the same data they shouldn’t be counted
equally with other data that was factored only once. Additionally, due to the limited funding, a
negative logarithm was applied to project size, reducing the score for larger sized projects.
Normally, if the program were fully funded, it’s desirable to acquire the larger tracts before the
smaller ones because larger tracts are generally of greater ecological value. Although for small
historic sites, it is often the opposite. He summarized by saying he tried to come up with a straw
man methodology balancing out all the resources without giving one resource any favoritism.
He directed ARC’s attention to the line below the yellow line. The scores in this line were the
same as those in the yellow line. If one chose to give more weight to historical resources, for
example, one could go to cell T11. If you change the score to “5”, you double the
recommended weighting for historical resources. You can also edit the changed score back to
the original value. One can do this for any of the weighting factors for the 25 variables. To
illustrate, rows 7 and 8 are where the minimum and maximum values are for all 114 projects
without the weighting factors applied, while rows 15 and 16 show the minimum and maximum
values after the weighting factors applied. So, if you change any of the values, the minimum
and maximum values change too. Basically, though, the spreadsheet is just a tool to help ARC.
Not everyone will assign the same emphasis or importance to all these variables. Division of
Historical Resources may want to change the factor to 10 or 20. When one does change the
values, the impact is not as enormous as one might imagine unless the weighting factors are
changed extraordinarily, especially for things like historical and archaeological sites. There was
a lot of discussion about that at the last ARC meeting. Even if you change the weighting factor
to ten times what it was, it doesn’t necessarily change the score for that kind of project because
it may have limited resource values otherwise.
Dr. Brock then shifted attention to page “Data”, the CCL category. In this category in the ranked
column, is a formula that says look at the calculated score and give the ranking within that
group. One can see that Archie Carr, for example, ranks #7 under this weighting system.
Caber Coastal is ranked #10, etc. He changed to twenty the weighting factor for Archaeological
Resources on the calc score sheet and then referred back to the data sheet to see if that
changed the sequencing within the coastal and climate change lands category. He pointed out
that Archie Carr fell to #12 which indicates that it must have [less] archeological significance
than some of the other projects in that category. Caber Coastal is now #8. There is some
movement, but it’s not that dramatic. So, this spreadsheet was created for ARC and each
member can use their own personal biases to determine how to weight the various resources
that we are trying to protect under this program. He said he hoped this information gave ARC a
little more comfort and that if any of the ARC members had any questions when the
spreadsheet is distributed before the next ranking, he would be happy to guide them. Also, if
ARC members have any questions about how the formulas were designed, he would be happy
to help with that too. He also said that if ARC needed other copies of the spreadsheet, he
would provide them. He said the spreadsheet was intended to try to help ARC in their ranking
decisions because when one has to rank 114 projects even when they’re divided into several
categories, it’s a difficult task especially given the diverse resources that the program was
designed to address. He then offered to address any questions about the spreadsheet.
Mr. Ballard thought this was great that the Council can manipulate the spreadsheet as each
member sees fit because that’s the way it should be; it shouldn’t be staff deciding the ranks, it
should be the Council. Dr. Brock agreed. Mr. Ballard asked how that would be triggered if
someone wanted to do that. They just ask and it gets put on the next ARC meeting agenda?
Dr. Brock responded by saying that if ARC doesn’t like the general formulations which he used
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