Participative multi-actor safety screening of infrastructures

摘要

Infrastructure planning very often underestimates safety issues in the early design phase. The reason for this is not necessarily the overwhelming importance of other aspects, such as functionality and economic considerations. Rather, the controversial views on safety held by different safety experts accounts for the major reason for not attributing safety the importance it deserves. In this paper we propose a seven-step methodology that allows multiple decision makers to evaluate infrastructure alternatives using safety and other indicators in early project phases. The methodology is based on analytic risk assessments, where the decision makers are asked to make ordinal tradeoffs among different safety, economic, and subjective aspects. The methodology allows multiple decision makers to aggregate preferences for different alternatives evaluated by different decision makers in a participative fashion. The proposed methodology was implemented in the Multimedia Group Decision Support Room at Delft University of Technology. The methodology was validated using real decision makers to show its realism and potential for participative decision making in safety planning.