Four Common Simplifications of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis do not hold for River Rehabilitation.

Simone D Langhans,Judit Lienert,Igor Linkov

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150695

Simone D Langhans, Judit Lienert + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150695

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Abstract

River rehabilitation aims at alleviating negative effects of human impacts such as loss of biodiversity and reduction of ecosystem services. Such interventions entail difficult trade-offs between different ecological and often socio-economic objectives. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is a very suitable approach that helps assessing the current ecological state and prioritizing river rehabilitation measures in a standardized way, based on stakeholder or expert preferences. Applications of MCDA in river rehabilitation projects are often simplified, i.e. using a limited number of objectives and indicators, assuming linear value functions, aggregating individual indicator assessments additively, and/or assuming risk neutrality of experts. Here, we demonstrate an implementation of MCDA expert preference assessments to river rehabilitation and provide ample material for other applications. To test whether the above simplifications reflect common expert opinion, we carried out very detailed interviews with five river ecologists and a hydraulic engineer. We defined essential objectives and measurable quality indicators (attributes), elicited the experts´ preferences for objectives on a standardized scale (value functions) and their risk attitude, and identified suitable aggregation methods. The experts recommended an extensive objectives hierarchy including between 54 and 93 essential objectives and between 37 to 61 essential attributes. For 81% of these, they defined non-linear value functions and in 76% recommended multiplicative aggregation. The experts were risk averse or risk prone (but never risk neutral), depending on the current ecological state of the river, and the experts´ personal importance of objectives. We conclude that the four commonly applied simplifications clearly do not reflect the opinion of river rehabilitation experts. The optimal level of model complexity, however, remains highly case-study specific depending on data and resource availability, the context, and the complexity of the decision problem.

Highlights

Due to human impact, freshwaters are among the most seriously threatened and modified environments on the planet [1]
We focus on Multi-Attribute Value and Utility Theory (MAVT/Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT)), two methods within the Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) family that are grounded on axioms of rational choice (e.g. [12, 13])
We showed that four commonly applied simplifications in the process of quantifying expert knowledge for MCDA-river rehabilitation did not reflect the opinion of most of our experienced experts, i.e. including only a small number of objectives and attributes and assuming linear value functions, additive aggregation, and risk neutrality

Summary

Introduction

Freshwaters are among the most seriously threatened and modified environments on the planet [1]. The success of a rehabilitation that aims at improving the overall ecological state of a degraded river system depends on concurrently achieving quality targets for biological, chemical, and physical elements. The valuation of these elements, is case-specific and difficult to base on empirical data, which is often sketchy. To satisfy this complexity, river rehabilitation often relies on the knowledge of experts, who deal with the assessment of and the trade-offs between the quality elements. Socio-economic preference elicitation from stakeholders is not the focus of this paper; for a more extensive discussion see [6]

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