Slippery Rock, PA 16057, USA

Systems Engineering and Management Science Institute

Henan Agricultural University

Zhengzhou 450002, the People's Republic of China

A challenging problem in regional economic planning, with the goals of (1) establishing individual but cooperative development plans, (2) optimizing the region's economic revenue, and (3) deriving a practical implementation plan, is presented. Due to the availability of very small samples, we will first develop a theoretic foundation, named grey systems theory, with emphasis put on several evaluation methods, decision-making methods, and various programming techniques. At the end of our study, we will present the relevant analytical studies of the challenging regional planning problem. In this paper, which is the first portion of our two-part study, we will end with the development of various decision-making methods.