Using Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for transdisciplinary co-design of the FANFAR flood forecasting and alert system in West Africa

Climate change is projected to increase flood risks in West Africa. The EU Horizon 2020 project FANFAR co-designed a pre-operational flood forecasting and alert system for West Africa in three lively workshops with 50–60 stakeholders, adopting a transdisciplinary framework from Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). We aimed to (i) exemplify MCDA as a structured transdisciplinary process; (ii) prioritize suitable FANFAR system configurations; and (iii) document and discuss empirical evidence. We used various interactive problem structuring methods in stakeholder sessions to generate 10 objectives and design 11 FANFAR system configurations. The non-additive MCDA model combined expert predictions about system performance with stakeholder preferences elicited in group sessions. All groups preferred a system producing accurate, clear, and accessible flood risk information that reaches recipients well before floods. To receive this, most groups would trade off higher operation and maintenance costs, development time, and implementing several languages. We accounted for uncertainty in expert predictions with Monte Carlo simulation. Sensitivity analyses tested the results’ robustness for changing MCDA aggregation models and diverging stakeholder preferences. Despite many uncertainties, three FANFAR system configurations achieved 63–70 % of the ideal case over all objectives in all stakeholder groups, and outperformed other options in cost-benefit visualizations. Stakeholders designed these best options to work reliably under difficult West African conditions rather than incorporating many advanced features. The current FANFAR system combines important features increasing system performance. Most respondents of a small online survey are satisfied, and willing to use the system in future. We discuss our learning drawing from design principles of transdisciplinary research. We attempted to over-come “unbalanced ownership” and “insufficient legitimacy” by including key West African institutions as consortium partners and carrying out co-design workshops with mandated representatives from 17 countries. MCDA overcomes challenges such as “lack of technical integration”, or “vagueness and ambiguity of results”. Whether FANFAR will have a “societal impact” depends on long term financing and system uptake by West African institutions after termination of EU sponsoring. We hope that our promising results will have a “scientific impact” and motivate further stakeholder engagement in hydrology research.

A Review of Problem Structuring Methods for Consideration in Prognostics and Smart Manufacturing

Successful use of prognostics involves the prediction of future system behaviors in an effort to maintain system availability and reduce the cost of maintenance and repairs. Recent work by the National Institute of Standards and Technology indicates that the field of prognostics and health management is vital for remaining competitive in today’s manufacturing environment. While prognostics-based maintenance involves many traditional operations researchcentric challenges for successful deployment such as limited availability of information and concerns regarding computational efficiency, the authors argue in this paper that the field of prognostics and health management, still in its embryonic development stage, could benefit greatly from considering soft operations research techniques as well. Specifically, the authors propose the use of qualitative problem structuring techniques that aid in problem understanding and scoping. This paper provides an overview of these soft methods and discusses and demonstrates how manufacturers might use them. An approach combining problem structuring methods with traditional operations research techniques would help accelerate the development of the prognostics field.

Co-designing a flood forecasting and alert system in West Africa with decision-making methods: the transdisciplinary project FANFAR

<p>Floods are a serious concern in West Africa, and their severity will likely increase with climate change. The European Union-financed, inter- and transdisciplinary project FANFAR (https://fanfar.eu/) aims at providing an operational flood forecast and alert pilot system for West Africa, based on an open-source hydrological model employed in a cloud-based Information and Communications Technology (ICT) environment. To achieve this, an existing pilot ICT system is co-designed and co-adapted to meet needs and preferences of West African users. Four workshops are carried out in West Africa from 2018 to 2020, each with around 40 representatives from hydrological and emergency management agencies from 17 West African countries.</p><p>To better understand the stakeholders’ needs and preferences, and to prioritize the development of the FANFAR ICT flood forecasting and alert system, we use Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). This MCDA framework guides through a stepwise procedure to develop the FANFAR ICT system such that it best fulfils those objectives that are fundamentally important to stakeholders. The first steps of MCDA are problem structuring; starting with a stakeholder analysis to identify the most important participants for the co-design workshops. In the first co-design workshop (Niamey, Niger, 2018), we then used different problem structuring methods (PSMs) to brainstorm which objectives are fundamentally important to West African stakeholders, and which options (ICT system configurations) might achieve these objectives. To generate objectives, we used online and pen-and-paper surveys, group brainstorming, and plenary discussions. To generate options, we used a strategy generation table and the brainwriting-635 method. Between workshops, the FANFAR consortium post-processed the objectives and options. We also interviewed experts to predict how well an option achieves each objective; including the uncertainty, which is later propagated to the MCDA results with Monte Carlo simulation.</p><p>The refined objectives were again discussed in plenary sessions in co-design workshop 2 (Accra, Ghana, 2019), and we elicited the participants’ preferences in small group sessions. Weight elicitation captures the trade-offs stakeholders are willing to make regarding achieving objectives, if not all objectives can be fully fulfilled. We used the card procedure to elicit weights (Simos revised procedure), and the popular swing method. As additional preference information for the MCDA modelling, we elicited the shape of the most-important marginal value functions, which “translate” the objectives’ measurement-units to a neutral value between 0 (objective is not achieved) and 1 (fully achieved). To give one example: for the objective “high accuracy of information”, the best case is “100% accuracy”, translated to the value v=1; the worst case “0% accuracy” translates to v=0. Furthermore, we asked whether stakeholders agree with the implications of the commonly used (linear) additive aggregation model in MCDA (weighted average).</p><p>We will present and discuss main results of the MCDA-modeling. Our main aim is to give some insights into the participatory co-design process employed in FANFAR, and recommendations for other projects. We will discuss the problem structuring and preference elicitation methods, and how well they worked in this interesting West African context.</p>

Knowledge Models for Spatial Planning: Ecosystem Services Awareness in the New Plan of Bari (Italy)

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) arises as a formal outcome of historical processes of understanding and interpreting settlements as complex ecological systems. Because of a straightforward, bottom-up demand for environment enhancement, this concept increasingly occurs in discourses, in narratives, in the demands of common people, triggering a new urban environmental awareness. This is now often arising spontaneously in the protocols of participatory plan processes, especially when planning for the future of complex environments such as city areas. The present study tries to elicit reflections around the significance of ES issues awareness in the case study of Bari (Italy), which is experiencing an inclusive and participatory process of construction of shared knowledge for the new master plan. Starting from an initial campaign of civic walks (CWs) along the urban neighborhoods and a subsequent semi-structured interview to the community, the paper carries out comparative analyses using problem-structuring methods (PMs), in order to evaluate and reflect on community behaviors and expectations about ES. Then the paper ends by emphasizing the role of structured knowledge-raising approaches, as critical activities to enhance ecosystem awareness in planning settlements as complex ecological systems.

Explore, Design and Act for Sustainability: A Participatory Planning Approach for Local Energy Sustainability

This paper focuses on the development of a participatory planning approach for local energy sustainability. The characteristics of a complex problem were reviewed to establish that the problem of sustainable energy at a local government level is complex. In order to better manage complex problems, the literature shows that soft operational research or problem-structuring methods need to be applied, and hence these methods were used as a starting point for developing a participatory planning approach. The requirements for a planning approach were elicited, namely that the approach must be participative and inclusive, holistic, simple and transparent. In addition, the approach must include the identification and assessment of risks as part of the deliberation process, the development of a realistic action plan must be attainable at the end of the stakeholder engagement, the approach must be dynamic, and should be formalised with clear institutional arrangements. A novel participatory approach, namely EDAS—to Explore, Design and Act for Sustainability—was then developed, applied, and evaluated as part of a case study with a local municipality in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The insights are relevant not only for local governments, but for any institution on a journey towards sustainability.