This study involves the testing of a framework for multi-criteria modelling and support of multi-stakeholder decision processes within the context of developing a new water level management policy for a regulated lake river system in Finland.

In this framework the stakeholders were involved in the decision process from the problem structuring stage to the group consensus seeking stage, followed by a stage of seeking public acceptance for the policy. The framework aimed at creating an evolutionary learning process. In this paper, focus was also on the use of a new interactive method for finding and identifying Pareto-optimal alternatives. Role playing experiments with students were used to test the practical applicability of a negotiation support procedure called the method of improving directions. The study has also developed  a preference programming approach for the aggregation of the stakeholder opinions in the final evaluation of alternatives and group consensus seeking. This approach consists of individual prioritisations as well as group interval models and consensus seeking. In addition, the approach was previously studied in transport planning and nuclear power related settings.