Search results for "Decision analysis"

Value of information in multiple criteria decision making: an application to forest conservation

2019

Abstract Developing environmental conservation plans involves assessing trade-offs between the benefits and costs of conservation. The benefits of conservation can be established with ecological inventories or estimated based on previously collected information. Conducting ecological inventories can be costly, and the additional information may not justify these costs. To clarify the value of these inventories, we investigate the multiple criteria value of information associated with the acquisition of improved ecological data. This information can be useful when informing the decision maker to acquire better information. We extend the concept of the value of information to a multiple crite…

2021

Sustainable forest management plays a key role for forest biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services (BES), including the important service of carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. Forest managers, however, find themselves in the increasingly complex planning situation to balance the often conflicting demands in BES. To cope with this situation, a prototype of a decision support system (DSS) for strategic (long-term) planning at the forest enterprise level was developed in the present project. The DSS was applied at three case study enterprises (CSEs) in Northern Switzerland, two lowland and one higher-elevation enterprise, for a 50-year time horizon (2010 to 2060…

Ranking corporate sustainability: a flexible multidimensional approach based on linguistic variables

2017

Corporate sustainability implies a compromise between the present environmental, social, and economic needs of a firm's stakeholders and their future needs. Corporate sustainability is therefore a multidimensional concept. Nowadays, several independent rating agencies rate firms in terms of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. These ratings are usually used by main sustainability indices such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, FTSE4 Good, Stoxx Sustainability Index, or Euronext Vigeo Family to select companies to invest in. Only those firms performing better than the average of their sector are selected. However, although providing linguistic ratings about the performan…

The ELECTRE I method to support the FMECA

2018

Abstract In traditional Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA), risk priorities of failure modes are determined through the Risk Priority Number (RPN), which is a function of the three risk parameters Occurrence (O), Severity (S), and Detection (D). In the present paper, an alternative approach to RPN is proposed for the criticality assessment of system failure modes. Particularly, the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) method ELECTRE I is proposed to select the most critical failure mode in the set of the failure modes charactering a complex system. The method has been applied to a case study previously proposed by Zammori and Gabrielli (2012).

Cognitive biases in humanitarian sensemaking and decision-making lessons from field research

2016

Time and again, humanitarian decision-makers are confronted with stress and pressure, distorted, lacking and uncertain information, and thus they are working in conditions that are known to introduce or enforce biases. Decision analysis has been designed to overcome such biases, and a network of “digital responders” organized over the Internet has set out to improve judgments by providing better information. However, without any structured support to determine objectives, goals and preferences and detached from the context of operational decision-makers, remote analysts may face the very biases they are trying to help overcome. This article sets out to identify biases that matter for humani…

Prioritizing covariates in the planning of future studies in the meta-analytic framework

2016

Science can be seen as a sequential process where each new study augments evidence to the existing knowledge. To have the best prospects to make an impact in this process, a new study should be designed optimally taking into account the previous studies and other prior information. We propose a formal approach for the covariate prioritization, i.e., the decision about the covariates to be measured in a new study. The decision criteria can be based on conditional power, change of the p-value, change in lower confidence limit, Kullback-Leibler divergence, Bayes factors, Bayesian false discovery rate or difference between prior and posterior expectation. The criteria can be also used for decis…

Purchase intention and purchase behavior online: A cross-cultural approach

2020

This article aims to explore the key factors on e-commerce adoption from elements of social psychology, such as attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, ease of use and perceived usefulness, introducing the study of non-traditional elements like buying impulse, compatibility, and self-efficacy in online stores, contrasting relationships in a cross-cultural environment. The proposed model is tested from quantitative research with a sample of 584 online consumers in Colombia and Spain. The following statistical analyses were conducted: CFA, structural equations, measurement instrument invariance, and multi-group analysis with EQS 6.3 software. The study reveals that self-effi…

A decision analysis for periapical surgery : retrospective study

2018

Background Periapical surgery is now a reliable therapeutic procedure for the treatment of teeth with periapical lesions, particularly when orthograde retreatment is problematic. However, little information is available regarding treatment planning of cases referred for periapical surgery. Therefore, this study was conducted to analyze and evaluate the factors that affect the decision-making process for periapical surgery. Material and Methods This study retrospectively assessed clinical and radiographic data from patients undergoing periapical surgery. The factors involved in deciding to perform periapical surgery were classified into technical, biological, and combined factors. Results Ou…

Using AHP methodology for prioritizing the actions in the transport sector in the frame of SECAPs

2020

The drafting of the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan, required for the local authorities joining the Covenant of Mayors initiative, is an opportunity to plan actions reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector. Choosing the measures to implement requires the application of a methodology that compares them, considering costs and impacts in terms of energy consumption, emissions reduction, and social benefits. The paper aims to develop a method based on the typical approach of the Analytical Hierarchy Process, supporting decisions in the transport sector in the frame of the drafting of SECAP. The method allows determining the priority actions and the optimal allocation…

Building a statistical surveillance dashboard for COVID-19 infection worldwide

2020

When a pandemic like the current novel coronavirus (COVID-19) breaks out, it is important that authorities, healthcare organizations and official decision makers, have in place an effective monitoring system to promptly analyze data, create new insights into problematic areas and generate actionable knowledge for fact-based decision making. The aim of this article is to describe an initial work focused on building a comprehensive statistical surveillance dashboard for the epidemic of COVID-19, which can be exploited also for future needs. We propose novel ways of exploring, analyzing and presenting data, using metrics that have not been used previously. We also show the steps necessary to b…