The limited amount of good tools for supporting elicitation of preference information in multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) causes practical problem. In our experiences, this can be remedied by allowing more relaxed input statements from decision-makers, causing the elicitation process to be less cognitively demanding. Furthermore, it should not be too time consuming and must be able to actually use of the information the decision-maker is able to supply. In this paper, we propose a useful weight elicitation method for MAVT/MAUT decision making, which builds on the ideas of rank-order methods, but increases the precision by adding numerically imprecise cardinal information as well.

Urban planning typically involves multiple actors and stakeholders with conflicting opinions and diverging preferences. The proposed development plans and actions greatly affect the quality of life of the local community at different spatial scales and time horizons. Consequently, it is important for decision-makers to understand and analyse the conflicting needs and priorities of the local community. This paper presents a decision analytic framework for evaluating stakeholder conflicts in urban planning. First, the stakeholders state their preferences regarding the actions in terms of a set of criteria and estimate the weight of each criterion. Then, a conflict index and overall value for each action is calculated. Next, a set of Pareto efficient portfolios of actions are generated by solving an optimization problem with different levels of conflict as a resource constraint. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the actions is performed. The framework is demonstrated using real-world survey data collected in the municipality of Upplands Väsby, Sweden.

This paper provides an overview and mapping of needs and use of data related to formal risk analysis within the context of critical infrastructures, including activities of risk assessments and risk modelling as a part of preventive work against major accidents and crises. The aim is to contribute to a greater understanding of the type of data that is actually used in published sources where different risk assessment or risk analysis methods are applied for critical infrastructure protection. The study focuses specifically on the presentation of applications of quantitative or semi-quantitative risk analysis in the scientific literature within the domain of societally important services and critical infrastructures. The survey was delimited to peer reviewed research papers between the years 2010 and 2020 and resulted in a total number of 183 papers subject for evaluation. The results provide insights into the type of data that is used, missing or difficult to obtain for an application of the identified methods. To obtain a comprehensive critical infrastructure risk analysis data needs are related to three different data dimensions; geospatial topology data, socio-economic data, and infrastructure data. However, no databases are currently available with the explicit purpose to support critical infrastructure risk analysis. Even though this is not viewed as a problem in the examined papers, collecting that data is resource intensive which is a barrier for a more systematic use of formal risk analysis methods.

During recent years, a great deal of attention has been focused on the financial risk management of natural disasters. One reason behind is that the economic losses from floods, windstorms, earthquakes and other disasters in both the developing and developed countries are escalating dramatically. It has become apparent that an integrated water resource management approach would be beneficial in order to take both the best interests of society and of the environment into consideration. One improvement consists of models capable of handling multiple criteria (conflicting objectives) as well as multiple stakeholders (conflicting interests). A systems approach is applied for coping with complex environmental and societal risk management decisions with respect to flood catastrophe policy formation, wherein the emphasis is on computer-based modeling and simulation techniques combined with methods for evaluating strategies where numerous stakeholders are incorporated in the process. The resulting framework consists of a simulation model, a decision analytical tool, and a set of suggested policy strategies for policy formulation. The framework will aid decision makers with high risk complex environmental decisions subject to significant uncertainties.

One of the core complexities involved in evaluating decision alternatives in the area of public decision-making is to deal with conflicts. The stakeholders affected by and involved in the decision often have conflicting preferences regarding the actions under consideration. For an executive authority, these differences of opinion can be problematic, during both implementation and communication, even though the decision is rational with respect to an attribute set perceived to represent social welfare. It is therefore important to involve the stakeholders in the process and to get an understanding of their preferences. Otherwise, the stakeholder disagreement can lead to costly conflicts. One way of approaching this problem is to provide means for comprehensive, yet effective stakeholder preference elicitation methods, where the stakeholders can state their preferences with respect to actions part of the current agenda of a government. In this paper we contribute two supporting methods: (i) an application of the cardinal ranking (CAR) method for preference elicitation for conflict evaluations and (ii) two conflict indices for measuring stakeholder conflicts. The application of the CAR method utilizes a do nothing alternative to differentiate between positive and negative actions. The elicited preferences can then be used as input to the two conflict indices indicating the level of conflict within a stakeholder group or between two stakeholder groups. The contributed methods are demonstrated in a real-life example carried out in the municipality of Upplands Väsby, Sweden. We show how a questionnaire can be used to elicit preferences with CAR and how the indices can be used to semantically describe the level of consensus and conflict regarding a certain attribute. As such, we show how the methods can provide decision aid in the clarification of controversies.

Recently, representations and methods aimed at analysing decision problems where probabilities and values (utilities) are associated with distributions over them (second-order representations) have been suggested. In this paper we present an approach to how imprecise information can be modelled by means of second-order distributions and how a risk evaluation process can be elaborated by integrating procedures for numerically imprecise probabilities and utilities. We discuss some shortcomings of the use of the principle of maximising the expected utility and of utility theory in general, and offer remedies by the introduction of supplementary decision rules based on a concept of risk constraints taking advantage of second-order distributions.