Building Stakeholders Consensus in Transportation Projects via Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Methods

The transparent practice of involving stakeholders in the decision making process can largely aid in eliminating opposition against sensitive and highly-debated transportation projects. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), in particular, is able to consider opposing points of view of multiple stakeholders. This paper presents the research done in the realm of MCDA with the objective of identifying the appropriate technique within the MCDA process that can best aid in building consensus among stakeholders. The work is done by examining a number of widespread techniques used at each MCDA step through its application to a real-case study. Assessing stakeholders' perceptions of each of these techniques is conducted throughout the analysis process. After presenting the case study decision context and the application of the MCDA techniques results in detail, the paper concludes with matrix recommendations for building consensus via MCDA. The research finds weight elicitation via pairwise comparison, scaling via modeling and utility function, and amalgamation via the probabilistic impact index method perform best with regards to providing confidence and building consensus among stakeholders.