Risk-Cost-Benefit Analysis For Port Environmental Security Investments

Abstract

This paper reviews experience in implementing risk-based multiobjective tradeoff analysis and decision making for water resources, multimodal and maritime transportation, and related topics. The paper addresses principally situations in which the decision space of risk management is large and combinatorial, engaging the decision maker in the allocation of resources to the security, robustness, and resilience of critical infrastructures. The applications are hurricane preparedness and resilience of multimodal transportation systems; optimal disaster protection of interdependent floodplain industry sectors; redundancy, robustness, and resilience of critical water resources infrastructure; priority setting of transportation systems that are vulnerable to extreme events; use of uncertain benefit-to-cost ratios to support tradeoff analysis in resource allocation to infrastructure improvements; requirements identification for major navigation structures that are vulnerable to accidents and natural hazards; and addressing the criteria of multiple stakeholders in management of the risk of extreme events for navigation structures. We address the relevance, lessons, and implications of the above for sustaining and improving the security and environmental security of ports and related critical infrastructures.