Effective decision support system based on statistical tools

Abstract

This paper focuses on an important topic-on evaluation of various transport structures. It is a typical situation that a decision maker must choose from various alternatives and with respect to different, often contradicting criteria. In this paper, a method adopted from the field of risk management, SAFMEA, was adopted. This is a novel approach that however introduces statistical evaluation of expert feedback to provide a robust decision support materials. Here, in a structured way, the expert know how is extracted and processed. In this approach, not only average aggregate values are evaluated. An important contribution of this approach is in looking into the variances in the answers from particular experts in order to capture the consensus or the lack of it. The method was validated on a case study from the Czech Republic, particularly on evaluating four different approaches to modernization of a highway D1. The method provided a recommendation that has been as a result actually implemented by the ministry of transport. The results confirm that the approach is worth consideration.