Decision model to integrate community preferences and nudges into the selection of alternatives in infrastructure development

Abstract

Selection of alternatives for sustainable infrastructure development is governed by many quantitative and qualitative factors that may be conflicting such as life cycle cost, environmental concerns, expansion feasibility, projected community growth, perception of the communities, lobbying efforts, and regulatory requirements. A framework to integrate these intrinsic factors is the basis of an optimal, sustainable, transparent, and practical decision. In this paper we present a decision model to reflect social and political dynamics in a multi-criteria decision making framework at the early stages of sustainable infrastructure development. The concepts of choosing by advantages (CBA), equilibria of social power between actors, and life cycle cost analysis are used to assess the decision in environmental/technical, social/political, and economic dimensions. Application of the model is discussed for the case of selecting urban/rural wastewater system alternatives. Theoretically, the proposed multi-dimensional decision model aims to integrate the political and social dynamics of the actors including their incentives into the structured decision space of sustainable infrastructure. The proposed model also further extends the existing literature through transparent account of trade-offs across technical, economic, and political dimensions of the selection of alternatives. Policy makers can specifically apply it in the feasibility stage of infrastructure development to facilitate integration of sustainability goals within a network of involved actors, observe the potential trade-offs between sustainability metrics, increase practicality and transparency of the public policy making, and explore the potential impact of nudges to instigate sustainability within infrastructure development.