Decision Aiding Process Research Articles

Evaluating alternatives to improve drinking water supply within a complex and uncertain human-environment system: case of the Port-au-Prince Metropolitan Region

ABSTRACT Improving decision making in urban water supply systems under a wide range of changing human-environmental scenarios represents a challenging issue, especially when there is a high level of uncertainty and the available information is limited or scarce. To address this concern, the present study applied a decision aiding process to evaluate long-term planning solutions for the Port-au Prince Metropolitan Region’s water supply in Haiti, which is recognized for having a low coverage of water services and great lack of monitoring data. The methodological framework assessed pre-specified alternatives to face uncertain future conditions, with the main emphasis of being aware of how these uncertainties can be framed in the water management practices. To discover the most robust management solutions, a tradeoff analysis and multi-objective optimization allowed to explore the performance of alternatives across many future states of the world and multiple criteria. The results highlighted that human factors associated with the increase of per-capita water use and population growth posed a greater risk on water supply coverage than climatic factors. In addition, the decision support can offer a comprehensive representation of potential supply/demand futures, and provides decision-makers with the opportunity to discuss a posteriori the most appropriate water supply solution under an extensive variety of information with severe uncertainty.

A multi-criteria decision aiding approach for upgrading public sewerage systems and its application to the city of Brest

Sewerage systems need to be improved in order to respect new regulatory frameworks which should lower the impacts on the environment and allow to prepare for increases of water discharge. In this paper, we propose a method to evaluate sewerage systems improvement scenarios through multiple criteria by using a Multi-Criteria Decision Aiding process. In doing so, we facilitate the integration of the different points of view of the various stakeholders and decision maker(s) in this evaluation. Our proposal also eases the process of the study, by proposing a clear, interactive and iterative business process, which allows all project actors to be integrated in an explicit way. Since the proposed solution is transparent, the final recommendation is more easily adopted by the different actors. We illustrate the genericity of the proposed approach through a real case study in the city of Brest in France and show how this work helped the project participants adopt the proposed recommendations.

Collaborative development of composite indices from qualitative value judgements: The EURO-HEALTHY Population Health Index model

Promoting participation and combining evidence with expert knowledge in constructing composite indices that can be meaningfully interpreted are key open challenges identified in performance measurement literature. To address them, this article proposes a sociotechnical decision-aid process, under a collaborative value-modelling framework, rooted in both process consultation and multicriteria value measurement principles. It consists of two phases (structuring and model building), each one developed in a sequence of non-face-to-face (Web-Delphi) and face-to-face (decision conferencing) group processes, designed to allow for increased participation. Performance indicators are selected and structured in a value-tree (phase one), upon which a group hierarchical additive value-function model is built (phase two), supported by the MACBETH multicriteria decision-support system. Collaborative questioning protocols allow to elicit and reconcile individual qualitative value judgements, in a Web-Delphi platform. The collective knowledge thus acquired is used in decision conferencing with a core group to define value functions and weights. Extensive sensitivity and robustness analyses serve to test the requisiteness of the model, giving rise to a shared structure of composite indices. The proposed approach was shaped within the EURO-HEALTHY project, to create a Population Health Index intended to be a tool enabling policymakers to analyse population health and related inequalities at the regional level across the European Union, and design improvement policies. Many stakeholders and experts from different intervention and knowledge areas, and located across Europe, participated in the different modelling activities, as detailed in this article. Research paths derived from learnings acquired are suggested to further improve process effectiveness and flexibility.

A Multicriteria Decision Trading System Based on Prospect Theory: A Risk Return Analysis of the TODIM Method

This paper proposes a trading system (TS) based on a multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) process known as TODIM, (Multicriteria Interactive Decision Making) a Portuguese acronym for interactive and multicriteria decision-making. MCDA has been employed to solve financial questions because of its ability to deal with a complex environment populated with different sorts of criteria and alternatives, such as financial markets. The aim is to propose a general and adaptive tool for supporting the trading strategies of investors and market practitioners in such an environment. The reason for selecting TODIM among the different MCDA methods is that it is based on prospect theory, which assumes that the risk profile of the investor varies according to different situations, considering the risk of loss or gain. A list of simulations using some of the most prominent Brazilian stocks is performed, and the results are compared with the Buy-and-Hold benchmark and a TS based on an ensemble method for selecting trading rules. The results show that, compared to Buy-and-Hold, a TODIM-based TS provides the same level of return with a lower level of risk exposure. The consequence is superior risk adjustment parameters. As a result, we have a model with similar results in profit, but with superior results in relation to risk-based performance, which makes the method advantageous in relation to similar ones.

Combined optimisation and MCDA based solution of the tram depot location problem

This paper deals with an issue of technical facilities location in a public transport system. The decision problem is formulated as a selection of the most advantageous alternative, i.e. the location of a new tram depot among the already existing facilities of this type. The selection is preceded by the evaluation of the alternatives. The assessment is not a trivial task, because there are many groups of interest with usually contradictory points of view. Therefore, the evaluation of the new tram depot locations should represent different aspects, e.g., economical, technical, environmental, and organizational. To handle such a complex decision problem the authors propose a methodology, which is a composition of the optimisation and multiple criteria evaluation techniques. The developed methodology is experimentally applied to the selection of one out of five tram depot locations in the public transport system of the city of Poznan, Poland. All the computational experiments are performed by means of optimization and multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA) methods and tools, i.e. a linear optimization engine Solver Premium Platform and AHP method with its application AHORNsimple. The calculations are the basis for recommending the location of a new depot in the central part of the transport system network, which is a reasonable solution taking into account, e.g. the proximity of the main railway line, the possibility of triple distribution of the transport means from depot. The proposed methodology of the decision problem solution gives also an opportunity to create the hierarchy of considered tram depot locations as well as to compare the position in the ranking of the best solution with the existing one. Since the proposed methodology assumes the selection of the most suitable MCDA method to the problem under consideration and the decision maker’s preferen¬ces, it guarantees that the result of analysis becomes reliable and the decision aiding process is credible.

A Methodological Framework to Support the Sustainable Innovation Development Process: A Collaborative Approach

The notion of sustainable innovation (SI) emerged recently in the academic literature and evokes deep changes in organizations’ products, processes, and practices to favour the creation of social and environmental value in addition to economic returns. The development of SI implies a collaborative process that requires the orchestration of several actors and streams of knowledge to be successful. Indeed, companies adopting the SI path need structured methodologies to guide the collaboration process with internal and external actors and support the decision process. Nevertheless, the literature has focused on the analysis of determinants and drivers of sustainable innovation development, while the process perspective has been discussed less. Through an in-depth case study in a large-sized company in France, this article proposes a methodological framework to guide the collaborative process in the early phases of sustainable innovation development. The framework relies on a combination of qualitative research and a multicriteria decision aiding method (AHP). The contributions of this work address two main aspects: (i) the conceptualization of sustainable innovation (SI) and (ii) the collaborative process between internal and external actors to develop SI. Firstly, our study leads to two additional dimensions to complete the concept of SI, traditionally based on the three pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social), by adding the functional and relational dimensions. Secondly, concerning the collaborative process to develop SI, our framework proposes a structured methodology following five steps: definition of the project scope, setting actors’ motivations, defining satisfaction criteria, proposing SI solutions, and performing a decision-aiding process to define the preference profiles of the key actors.

A Framework for Post-Project Evaluation of Multicriteria Decision Aiding Processes from the Stakeholders’ Perspective: Design and Application

A Framework for Post-Project Evaluation of Multicriteria Decision Aiding Processes from the Stakeholders’ Perspective: Design and Application

An Interactive Recommendation System for Decision Making Based on the Characterization of Cognitive Tasks

The decision-making process can be complex and underestimated, where mismanagement could lead to poor results and excessive spending. This situation appears in highly complex multi-criteria problems such as the project portfolio selection (PPS) problem. Therefore, a recommender system becomes crucial to guide the solution search process. To our knowledge, most recommender systems that use argumentation theory are not proposed for multi-criteria optimization problems. Besides, most of the current recommender systems focused on PPS problems do not attempt to justify their recommendations. This work studies the characterization of cognitive tasks involved in the decision-aiding process to propose a framework for the Decision Aid Interactive Recommender System (DAIRS). The proposed system focuses on a user-system interaction that guides the search towards the best solution considering a decision-maker’s preferences. The developed framework uses argumentation theory supported by argumentation schemes, dialogue games, proof standards, and two state transition diagrams (STD) to generate and explain its recommendations to the user. This work presents a prototype of DAIRS to evaluate the user experience on multiple real-life case simulations through a usability measurement. The prototype and both STDs received a satisfying score and mostly overall acceptance by the test users.

Rationalizing environmental decision-making through economic valuation?

Environmental economic valuations of biodiversity are an increasingly active field of academic inquiry, often presented as a prominent means to rationalize decision-making on environmental issues. However, the meaning of this argument is unclear, because it uses the term “rationalize” in a loose way. This argument, as it is typically formulated in the literature, makes it look as though economic valuations do not involve any value-judgment by economists: by emphasizing rationalization, this argument silences value-judgements. This blind spot is critical, since environmental inequalities are pervasive in economic valuations and their applications, and environmental decision making hence unavoidably involves value-judgements. In this article, we identify conditions upon which environmental economic valuations can truly contribute to rationalizing decision making, despite environmental inequalities. We review the main arguments found in the literature to entrench the credentials of economic approaches to rationalize decision-making, and argue that these approaches fail, at a fundamental level. We then argue that the key for economic valuations to truly contribute to rationalization is that their usage should be embedded in the deployment of what we will call a justificatory task. We then take advantage of an analysis of the notion of rationality, when applied to decision-aiding processes, to translate this reasoning in the concrete terms of applications of environmental economic valuations. According to the argument that we articulate here, standard economic valuations, just like any other application of economic tools, can indeed play a role in rationalizing environmental decisions, in spite of the inequalities that they (re)produce. But this possibility is conditioned by the requirement that the economist implementing them should produce justifications.

A User-centered Decision-aiding Process for Selecting Power Analysis Tools.

A priori power analyses have become increasingly popular in scientific communities, but the practice has not been widely discussed by HFE researchers. Given the complexity of conducting such analyses, software tools are essential. We review the emergence and current state of power analysis software tools, and use the concept of User-Centered Design as an analytical lens for examining the relationship between researchers' needs and power analysis tools' characteristics. Centering on users' wants and needs, we propose a decision-aiding process to assist researchers in identifying appropriate power analysis tools. This process consists of five user-centered considerations - two functional criteria (software input; software output) and three usability heuristics (learnability; ease of use; accessibility) - which are organized into a workflow. These criteria and heuristics are translated into questions that researchers should go through during the decision process. We illustrate use of the decision-aiding process with three example scenarios and lay out implications for researchers.

Challenges in the achievement of a Net Zero Carbon Built Environment – A systemic approach to support the decision-aiding process in the design stage of buildings

By limiting global warming to 2°C, the climate goals set by the United Nations in 2015 (Agenda 2030) will clearly be missed. The shrinking of our GHG budget has shown that the implementation of a weak sustainability concept - i.e. equal consideration of all sustainability dimensions (environmental, economic and social) - is not sufficient to meet the requirements of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Based on the strong sustainability concept - i.e. focusing on the environmental dimension of sustainability - this article highlights the challenges in the achievement of a Net Zero Carbon Built Environment by the implementation of a systemic design model in the early design stage of buildings. The visualisation of individual planning practices and their systemic behaviour in relation to other planning practices respectively to the SDGs support planners to manage the complexity and to reduce the additional effort within the implementation of sustainability aspects in the early design stage of buildings. Next to the visualisation of the environmental impacts of planning practices, the effects on other SDGs can be highlighted. Furthermore, the planner is supported in the decision-aiding processes in the early design stage. With the application of the systemic design model and the implementation of identified planning practices the contribution to the fulfilment of Agenda 2030 increases.

Profiling analysts and actors in interaction: how behavioural aspects can positively affect the decision aid process

The behaviour of the actors in a decision aid process is determined by different factors, all of which have an impact on the effectiveness of the process and its results. A framework, originally created to document decision aid processes and to study the reasons for backward and forward cycles in the process, has been used to comparatively analyse several multi-criteria decision aid interventions. The study has led to the identification of three basic process typologies, in relation with some organisational and processual complexities and factors which, as behavioural aspects, have the main influence on the interaction between the analysts and actors of a decision aid process. The work is a proposal for the behavioral OR research agenda.

Assigning a house for refugees: an application of a multiple criteria nominal classification method

The paper proposes the use of a multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA) nominal classification method to tackle a dramatic current social problem: the accommodation system for refugees. In recent years, the number of people in need of protection and assistance as a consequence of forced displacement has drastically increased. As many other European cities, Turin (Italy) offers to refugees temporary places for a limited time span, but they are insufficient and often inadequate. Meanwhile, there are several underused buildings that can potentially be used to cover the refugees’ needs of housing and facility. Combining these two aspects, this study aims at contributing to the definition of an urban strategy and improve the decision aiding process related to the accommodation system in Turin. We adopt a recently developed MCDA method to tackle the problem of accommodation of migrants, that is, the Cat-SD (Categorization by Similarity–Dissimilarity) method. We face a nominal classification problem where underused buildings located in the city of Turin are assigned to categories (i.e., three migrant status). A decision model is constructed based on the judgments of the experts. Thus, the application of the method allows to identify an adequate category (or categories) of migrant status for each building.

How to Assess Urban Regeneration Proposals by Considering Conflicting Values

Urban regeneration has to be based on rigorous methodological frameworks able to find a balance among preservation instances, economic development, urban quality and the well-being of the population. Considering these premises, this research is focused on the definition of the decision-aiding process for the reuse of an abandoned health care facility with several historic buildings. Both public and private interests have been taken into consideration, since they play an important role for the urban regeneration project and for the definition of urban regeneration policies. Given the complexity of this issue, the evaluation process has been structured by combining different methodologies to support the policy cycle: Stakeholder Analysis, to identify the actors engaged (Social sustainability); Nara Grid for the values elicitation of the Built Cultural Heritage (Cultural and environmental sustainability); and the subsequent definition of different sustainable scenarios evaluated by the Discounted Cash Flow Analysis (Economic sustainability). Four alternatives have been assessed with the support of a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) aimed at defining the most balanced one considering heritage significance retention and urban regeneration. This work contributes to the literature on soft OR by exploring interactions among different stakeholders and addresses policy instances by providing a transparent methodology based on value elicitation.

On the rationality of decision aiding processes

The notion of rationality plays a crucial role in Decision Aiding (DA), both as a scientific discipline and as a professional practice. Indeed, a pervasive and possibly constitutive feature of DA is that it constantly faces challenges as to whether it is valid, legitimate, useful, practical, etc. Rationality plays a pivotal role in participating to determine whether DA fulfills such requirements. In this article, we take advantage of arguments developed in the philosophical literature, mainly by Habermas, to introduce a framework defining a series of conceptions of rationality. We use this framework in order to introduce a typology of DA approaches, distinguishing objectivist, conformist, adjustive and reflexive approaches. Whereas the underlying conception of rationality plays a key role in determining the features of DA processes, we argue that tools are largely independent of conceptions of rationality. Our reasoning has direct operational implications, which makes it of distinctive interest, not only for philosophers and operational research theoreticians, but also for practitioners. We explain how practitioners should reason in practice to identify which DA approach they should implement in a given situation. We then explain how they can take advantage of our analysis to entrench the legitimacy and validity of their recommendations.

Combining a dynamic simulation tool and a multi-criteria decision aiding algorithm for improving existing District Heating

The work aims to evaluate the recovering potential of excess heat in the return pipe of a district heating (DH) for heating some substations.The proposed method combines a DH simulation tool and a multi-criteria decision aiding algorithm. It is based on the analysis of the measured return temperatures at each sub-station in order to identify those with high potential of efficiency gains by using the return flow (with support of the supply pipe when needed). Combinations of substations from this set of eligible ones define potential scenarios of connection to the return pipe. The impacts of each scenario on the DH operational performance and the energy savings are evaluated with a detailed hydro-thermal model. The technical parameters and the energy efficiency are not the only points of view in the selection process “of best compromise” scenarios for the improvement of the DH, so that we propose a complex decision aiding process, involving multiple criteria, dealing with different points of view (economic, energy, technical…) and different decision makers. The evaluations of the scenarios on the criteria are summed up in a so-called performance table and aggregated by an outranking model (MR-Sort) to identify relevant scenarios.This methodology is illustrated by the example of a part of the DH in Nantes (France). Interpretation of data from substations of a specific branch showed the potential of connecting some of them to the return pipe. Six scenarios were generated and evaluated with four criteria. Then, the Multi-criteria Decision Aiding method associated to two actors who have different priorities lead to not obvious results at a first glance.

Studying the generation of alternatives in public policy making processes

The design of alternatives is an essential part of decision making that has been less studied in theory and practice compared to alternatives’ evaluation. This topic is particularly relevant in the context of public policy making, where policy design represents a crucial step of the policy cycle since it determines the quality of the alternative policies being considered. This paper attempts to formalise the decision aiding process in two real interventions dealing with alternatives’ generation for territorial policy making in Italy. The aim of this research is to understand what generates novelty within the alternatives’ design phase of a decision aiding process, i.e. what allows to expand the solution space and discover new alternatives to solve the problem under consideration. It demonstrates ways in which novelty in decision processes can be supported by Operational Research/Multicriteria Decision Aiding tools. The two case studies are used to answer the following questions: (i) Why have new alternatives arose during the policy making process? (ii) How have they been generated? (iii) Which consequences did they lead to? and (iv) What generated novelty in the process? The results highlight two main reasons that can expand the solution space within a decision aiding process: (i) dissatisfaction (of the client, of the analyst or of the relevant stakeholders, especially when dealing with public policies) with respect to the solutions currently proposed to the decision making problem and (ii) opportunity for a change in one of the variables/constraints.

Supporting the multi-criteria decision aiding process: R and the MCDA package

Reaching a decision when multiple, possibly conflicting, criteria are taken into account is often a difficult task. This normally requires the intervention of an analyst to aid the decision maker in following a clear methodology with respect to the steps that need to be taken, as well as the use of different algorithms and software tools. Most of these tools focus on one or a small number of algorithms, some are difficult to adapt and interface with other tools, while only a few belong to dynamic communities of contributors allowing them to expand in use and functionality. In this paper, we address these issues by proposing to use the R statistical environment and the MCDA package of decision aiding algorithms and tools. This package is meant to provide a wide range of MCDA algorithms that may be used by an analyst to tailor a decision aiding process to their needs, while the choice of R takes advantage of the yet poorly explored opportunity to interface data analysis and decision aiding. We additionally demonstrate the use of this tool on a practical application following a well-defined decision aiding process.

A mixed methods approach for the integration of urban design and economic evaluation: Industrial heritage and urban regeneration in China

This paper presents the early results of a study aimed at experimenting an innovative approach to the design and the evaluation of complex urban transformation processes, based on the combined use of different design strategies and tools. The purpose of the paper is to illustrate, by means of a case study, a multi-level decision aiding process, able to support strategic urban design, with specific reference to regeneration processes for abandoned industrial sites in urban areas. The case study presented in the paper concerns different alternative proposals for the requalification of the former Shougang/Er-Tong mechanical factory in Beijing, China. The choice of a Chinese case study as a field test for an experimentation about mixed methods research approaches in the domain of urban transformation is related to the peculiar emerging conditions of that context, in which huge economic potentials are speeding up the transformation but a substantial lack of cultural and methodological instruments to manage a so fast modification exists. During the design process, three methods in particular have been combined according to a multi-phase design: (i) Stakeholders Analysis, (ii) Multicriteria Analysis, and (iii) Discounted Cash Flow Analysis. Each one of them has been applied in parallel to the evolution of the different design scenarios. The results of the performed study show that mixed methods approaches are a promising line of research in the field of environmental evaluation and urban design. Insights and guidelines for the replication of the proposed methodological approach in other territorial contexts are also proposed.

A Synthesis of Information Imperfection Representations for Decision Aid

Information imperfection encompasses different terms such as uncertainty, imprecision, inaccuracy or incompleteness, used in the literature to describe any “weakness” in the quality of available information. Many theories or languages such as probability theory, fuzzy set theory, possibility theory or the theory of evidence, handle these imperfections using different representation formalisms and processing modes. A review of main theories is presented emphasizing their conditions of use, some useful properties and relationships between these theories. These relationships are exploited to build an approach with high-level guidelines to assist the choice of information imperfection representation language in a decision aiding process.