Facilitating Dam Removal Decisions With Multiple Objectives

Proactive and transparent decision‐making about the long‐term management of dams, including rehabilitation, retrofit, and removal, is critical for successfully managing this aging infrastructure and presents an opportunity to weigh the many services and disservices dams provide. Existing tools to support dam removal decisions often constrain decision processes by considering only a limited set of user objectives. We identified 18 dam removal objectives in the literature and found that most of the 41 dam removal decision‐support tools we evaluated included only two or three objectives. Common objectives of previous dam removals like reducing safety hazard and expanding recreational opportunities were included in few decision‐support tools. To facilitate dam removal decisions with diverse objectives, we created a new web application, which supports decisions with the 18 objectives that we identified in the literature. The application guides users to select appropriate objectives, choose metrics and methods to evaluate management alternatives, and identify additional decision‐support tools to weigh alternatives relative to selected objectives. We demonstrate this web application as a resource for the dam management community of practice with a case study of a dam removal decision in Athens, Georgia, USA. More broadly, we propose the process outlined here as a model for aligning diverse objectives in other types of river infrastructure decisions. Given the contribution of this infrastructure to declining biodiversity, intensifying climate, and development needs, failing to align multiple objectives in river infrastructure decisions can represent consequential, missed opportunities.