Prioritizing Sea-Dumped Munitions for Clearance

Abstract Prioritizing sea-dumped munition piles for clearance exemplifies a sustainability governance challenge in which spatial decisions must be made amid diverse stakeholder interests and limited scientific information. Here, we present a co-creation process to design a multi-tier index that combines multiple knowledge types within the Analytical Hierarchy Process to enable such decisions. We use the Source-Pathway-Receptor-Consequence model to structure the selection of data sources. We introduce a two-level weighting structure in which stakeholder elicitation reveals preferences, while expert elicitation complements limited scientific information. We apply the process to develop MCA-DuMP, a multi-tier index, to prioritize 39 munition piles in the German Baltic Sea. We identify 10 high-priority piles for clearance, spatial hotspots, and the need to rezone contaminated areas. The index currently supports Germany’s pioneering effort to systematically clear sea-dumped munitions, but can also be applied in other contexts. The co-creation process itself is applicable to spatial prioritization problems in general.