Scenario and multiple criteria decision analysis for energy and environmental security of military and industrial installations

Abstract

Military and industrial facilities need secure and reliable power generation. Grid outages can result in cascading infrastructure failures as well as security breaches and should be avoided. Adding redundancy and increasing reliability can require additional environmental, financial, logistical, and other considerations and resources. Uncertain scenarios consisting of emergent environmental conditions, regulatory changes, growth of regional energy demands, and other concerns result in further complications. Decisions on selecting energy alternatives are made on an ad hoc basis. The present work integrates scenario analysis and multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to identify combinations of impactful emergent conditions and to perform a preliminary benefits analysis of energy and environmental security investments for industrial and military installations. Application of a traditional MCDA approach would require significant stakeholder elicitations under multiple uncertain scenarios. The approach proposed in this study develops and iteratively adjusts a scoring function for investment alternatives to find the scenarios with the most significant impacts on installation security. A robust prioritization of investment alternatives can be achieved by integrating stakeholder preferences and focusing modeling and decision-analytical tools on a few key emergent conditions and scenarios. The approach is described and demonstrated for a campus of several dozen interconnected industrial buildings within a major installation.

Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis

“…The Analytic Hierarchy Process has also been used, e.g., for project selection [108]. When military portfolio decisions are meant to build preparedness for complex futures, scenario-based methods are often used [109] [110]. Some analyses are largely about determining project-level value measures for ranking and prioritisation of investments.…”

Review of the Literature on Multicriteria Methods Applied in the Field of Public Security

“…Karvetski et al [76] Scenario and multiple criteria decision analysis for energy and environmental security of military and industrial installations Scopus Lau et al [77] Optimizing patrol force deployment using a genetic algorithm Scopus Nutt et al [78] Drug harms in the UK: A multicriteria decision analysis Scopus Source: Prepared by the authors…”

“…Thus, Karvetski et al [76] study addresses the issue inherent to the physical security of military installations, as regards the supply of energy, which may jeopardize the safety of such facilities. The authors employed a scenario analysis and multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology to choose the best investment to be made in the energy matrix project.…”

Priority Setting and Integrated Assessment of Transportation System Vulnerabilities to Deep Uncertainties

“…More recent case studies and applications of the integration of scenario analysis and multicriteria decision analysis include statewide multimodal transportation planning (Schroeder and Lambert, 2011), the identification of most influential climate change scenarios (Karvetski et al, 2011a(Karvetski et al, , 2011c, and the priority-setting of risk-communication strategies for the siting of liquefied natural gas terminals in Mexico (Martinez et al, 2011;2010).…”