Valutazioni integrate: da "processo di apprendimento" a "gestione della conoscenza"

Among the decision-making processes for planning and designing, evaluation is more and more important as tool to make choices, to recognize values, interests and needs, and to explore relevant aspects that can influence decisions. It is an “implicit tool” to integrate approaches, methods and models, able to follow the different needs of the decision-making process. It is therefore important to identify “new approaches” able to give an analytic and evaluative structure to integrate purposes and multidimensional values within the decision-making processes. It is necessary to develop evaluation paths not focusing only on the environmental, social and economic effects of different options, but also considering the nature of the stakes, identifying priorities and values that can influence the decision-making process in every step. It is important to use normative and instrumental approaches, but also “explorative” ones, open to plurality and dialogue among the different expertise involved. These approaches and models are part of the architecture of “decision support systems” of complex decision-making processes, oriented to an integrated planning, that can support both the selection, the monitoring and the management of different resources, and the interaction among decision-makers, decision-takers and stakeholders. The paper means to make clear, through some significant case-studies, how the evaluation can be a tool to dialogue and interact different expertise able to support learning processes, the management of knowledge and the creation of shared choices, using the proper techniques and tools. In this view, evaluation can be useful to support the decision-making processes, able to put together technical and political evaluations, referring to complex values that are part of conflicting and changing realities, where it is necessary to work together with the principles of sustainability.