Interactions of risk analysis and policy making in infrastructure planning in developing countries

Infrastructure development plays an important role in improving standards of living and reducing poverty in the developing regions of the world. In regions faced with uncertainties of military conflicts, politics, economics... [ view full abstract ]

Infrastructure development plays an important role in improving standards of living and reducing poverty in the developing regions of the world. In regions faced with uncertainties of military conflicts, politics, economics and others, resources have to be put not only into the technical aspects of strategic plans, but the social and organizational as well since shifts in stakeholder preferences or political or security landscapes might drastically affect the priority setting of initiatives. This paper adds a rule-based approach to scenario-based preferences for risk filtering, and demonstrates the approach in a context of prioritizing initiatives that advance the electric power sector of Afghanistan. The paper thus demonstrates how various scenarios, alone and in combination, relatively influence or disrupt the prioritization of capacity-building initiatives. The case study furthermore addresses the interaction of risk assessment and management with institutional policy and objectives in the development of requirements and terms for a power purchase and delivery agreement involving several military and civil agencies. The role of information sharing and collaboration between local and international agencies involved in the agreement is stressed as well as the continuous update and refinement of risk management strategies as politics and security situations evolve.
The main contributions of the work is extending current research on disruption of priorities with scenario-based preferences to rule-based preference relationships that can be applied more generally and adding a new dimension to the methodology by analyzing several complementary sets of criteria and developing methods to measure the agreement between the different sets. This includes adding to traditional risk analysis by prioritizing risks that disrupt current priorities or cause a change-of-minds among decision makers as well as risks with the highest likelihood and consequences.