Analysis of dependence of decision quality on data quality

GIS professionals seem to assume that better data leads to better decisions. Is this true? An analysis to determine the effects of data quality on the quality of decisions reveals relations that are useful to consider before blindly investing in data quality improvement. This article analyzes data quality and how it influences the quality of a decision with an example of environmental engineering decisions. It shows that the uncertainty in aspects, which are poorly known, e.g., the necessary security levels, dominate the uncertainty of the decision. Efforts to collect more or better date to improve the data quality of the data stored in the GIS would not reduce uncertainty in the decision significantly. This result seems to be consistent with results from other studies for this very large class of decisions and it appears to be further generalizable and useful to investigated other decision situations.