Stakeholder-driven multi-attribute analysis for energy project selection under uncertainty

Laura Read, Kaveh Madani, Soroush Mokhtari, Catherine Hanks
2017 Energy  
48 In practice, selecting an energy project for development requires balancing criteria and 49 competing stakeholder priorities to identify the best alternative. Energy source selection can be 50 modeled as multi-criteria decision-maker problems to provide quantitative support to reconcile 51 technical, economic, environmental, social, and political factors with respect to the stakeholders' 52 interests. Decision making among these complex interactions should also account for the 53 uncertainty
more » ... present in the input data. In response, this work develops a stochastic decision 54 analysis framework to evaluate alternatives by involving stakeholders to identify both 55 quantitative and qualitative selection criteria and performance metrics which carry uncertainties. 56 The developed framework is illustrated using a case study from Fairbanks, Alaska, where 57 decision makers and residents must decide on a new source of energy for heating and electricity. 58 We approach this problem in a five step methodology: (1) engaging experts (role players) to 59 develop criteria of project performance; (2) collecting a range of quantitative and qualitative 60 input information to determine the performance of each proposed solution according to the 61 selected criteria; (3) performing a Monte-Carlo analysis to capture uncertainties given in the 62 inputs; (4) applying multi-criteria decision-making, social choice (voting), and fallback 63 bargaining methods to account for three different levels of cooperation among the stakeholders; 64 and (5) computing an aggregate performance index (API) score for each alternative based on its 65 performance across criteria and cooperation levels. API scores communicate relative 66 performance between alternatives. In this way, our methodology maps uncertainty from the input 67 data to reflect risk in the decision and incorporates varying degrees of cooperation into the 68 analysis to identify an optimal and practical alternative. 69 70
doi:10.1016/j.energy.2016.11.030 fatcat:4o25wsvpnffejatxs6cn5qovrq