Structuring and Modelling Stakeholders' Preferences for Transportation Infrastructure Development in Post-Conflict Zones

This paper develops an expert elicitation (EE) process to identify, structure and quantify stakeholder values and concerns related to infrastructure development, and applies it to post-conflict Iraq. Transportation improvements are key to stabilising Iraq economically and politically and helping prevent it from becoming a failed state that could lead to a major breeding ground for terrorism. The EE process includes: (1) identification of relevant stakeholders connected to transportation infrastructure development, (2) application of Value Focused Thinking (VFT) to develop an objectives hierarchy for each stakeholder, (3) development of possible future uncertain scenarios and policy alternatives relevant to transportation infrastructure, (4) construction of a multi-attribute utility (MAU) model for each stakeholder, (5) comparison of MAU scores across stakeholders and future scenarios and policy alternatives and (6) construction of a weighted stakeholder model that aggregates scores across stakeholders for different future scenarios and policy alternatives. This case-study presents a novel application of three different decision analysis methodologies: (1) VFT to identify stakeholder objectives; (2) MAU to quantify stakeholder trade-offs among conflicting objectives and quantify performance of scenario alternatives on constructed metrics and (3) prescriptive weighted stakeholder aggregation to indicate a ranking of scenario options. The EE process is applied to analysing the goals of 16 stakeholder groups, representing a broad cross-section of parties of interest in a hypothetical investment allocation decision regarding the development of viable, resilient and sustainable transportation infrastructure systems in Iraq. Each stakeholder considers investment allocations among alternatives that emphasise seaport development, land-based transportation development, accessibility and safety under various conditions. Two alternative approaches to aggregating stakeholder preferences to form a group ranking are examined, including a prescriptive model for group decision analysis. The results indicate that investments focusing on land transportation and accessibility were ranked highest across stakeholder groups. All four alternative investment allocations were preferred to the default investment option. The analysis allows us to identify conflicts among stakeholders related to trade-offs among competing objectives, disagreements about the projected outcomes of various investment alternatives on stakeholder-defined attributes. It also identifies win-win investment allocations.