The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for decision-making and expert judgement in railway infrastructure maintenance

Decision-making and expert judgements are two vital activities within safety and risk management, e.g. regarding: analyses of frequencies and consequences in safety and risk analysis; risk tolerability decisions in safety and risk evaluation and decision-making in safety and risk control. Hence, there are formal methodologies to support decision-making and elicit expert judgement. These methodologies also contribute to inter-subjectivity, transparency and traceability of performed decisions and judgements, which in turn support continuous improvement and risk reduction. One su ch methodology is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), which occurs in a steadily increasing number of scholar publications related to railway safety and risk throughout the last 30 years. This paper explores literature about AHP within railway, and describes an application of AHP to obtain preferences for strategic railway infrastructure criteria, such as safety, and for different infrastructure maintenance actions. The AHP application was supported by a software tool, which facilitated recording, calculation and presentation of the track managers’ preferences. The track managers consider it easy to understand the rationale of AH P and to enter their preferences with the aid of a computer and the software tool.