Support for Sustainable Development Policy Decisions A Case Study from Highway Maintenance

“You can't make this a science!” — Analyzing decision support systems in political contexts

“…The level of detail is on a high level and facts are needed that are hard to understand (Cowell et al, 2006). All this can be a challenge for the users.…”

“…In the two Netherland cases (Monnikhof & Bots, 2000), which involved large citizen groups, the processes were stalled and there was low interest in the outcome of the MCDA's. The influence of the MCDA on the final policy outcome was very limited: "Two analyses with diverging results were performed, both were heavily User input not used further in the process Low interest in outcome of process Project stalled Cain et al (2003) and Monnikhof and Bots (2000) Selecting and using criteria Not all criteria and options included in system Criteria not independent of each other Criteria double counted as they use the same variables Criteria uncertain as data is contested Borges Pedro and Villavicencio (2004), Calizaya et al (2010), Cowell et al (2006), Linkov et al (2006) and Monnikhof and Bots (2000) Elicit weights for criteria Hard to quantify criteria Wide variety in weights leading to "average" indefinable Splitting up or merging criteria can lead to manipulation of ranking Emotional ranking due to people's stakes in the project (2000) Comprehensibility Underlying facts/data/logic can be hard to understand Cain et al (2003) and Cowell et al (2006) contested by the participants", and there was not much "interest in the content of the process anyway, since hardly any concrete proposals were adopted and none carried out so far" (Monnikhof & Bots, 2000, pp. 37-38).…”

“…In a case from the United Kingdom (Cowell, Begg, & Clift, 2006), where MCDA was used as support for environmental decision-making in a highway maintenance programme, environmental interventions were double counted. In this case the emissions of cadmium appeared in three different decision criteria and "therefore appear to have an unjustifiably inflated significance in the decision" (Cowell et al, 2006, pp.…”

Participatory multi-criteria decision analysis for prioritizing impacts in environmental and social impact assessments

“…Studies based primarily on MCDA for specific solutions are abundant (Aragon es-Bletran, Garc ıa-Mel on, and Montesinos-Valera 2017; Malloy et al 2013;Mota, de Almeida, and Alencar 2009;Rossi, Cancelliere, and Giuliano 2005;von Doderer and Kleynhans 2014). Further, the use of MCDA as a complement to wider methodological approaches occupies a notable place in scientific production in the field of sustainable management and social and environmental life cycle assessment of different economic activities (De Luca et al 2015;Cowell, Begg, and Clift 2006;Karjalainen et al 2013).…”