A Method for Multi-Criteria Analysis in Transportation Infrastructure Investments

Abstract

The present paper presents a method for Transportaion Infrastructure investment evaluation/appraisal, which belongs to the category of Multi-criteria Analysis (MCA) methods. Its structuring is based on certain considerations related to broader multi-criteria analysis, but it proposes ways to overcome some of the shortcomings of the well-established MCA methods. A basic concept of the proposed method is that equality holds in entities weighting among evaluation criteria. It introduces the utilisation weighting, which measures each project's grade-performance in a criterion in relation to its position in the whole grade-performance. Furthermore, it accepts that simple criteria may be classified in a broader criterion, on the basis of their performances within this broader criterion, and thus a representation between the evaluation criteria and the vectorial space is introduced lifting the constraint of perpendicularity. The method is introducing also for each evaluation criterion its particular rendering from a physical scale to an artificial one, which depends on criterion features. Thus, for each evaluation criterion the critical points (upper and lower limits) of physical scale must correspond to the artificial scale. A last feature of the proposed method is the introduction of the time dimension in the criteria values over the whole evaluation period. This is accomplished with the introduction of the time deviation factors, which incoporate the deviations of positive and negative impacts during the evaluation period. The applicability and the abilities of the proposed method are demonstrated with an example.