An evaluation of preference weighting methods in multi- criteria analysis: testing on sediment remediation alternatives in the Bergen Harbour

Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is being used in the Sediment and Society project as a tool for communicating impacts, as a tool for documenting differences in interests of stakeholder groups, and as a tool for ranking complex sediment remediation alternatives. Ranking of alternatives in MCA requires impacts to be (i) standardised, and then (ii) weighted against one another. This Technical Brief evaluates alternative approaches that were tested by a group of researchers in a pilot evaluation session of the MCA software DEFINITE. The testing of DEFINITE finds that while more theoretically sound, the EValues procedure offered in the software package was more cumbersome to implement than the pairwise weighting of the analytical hierarchy procedures (AHP). This lead the team to conclude that further use of DEFINITE in the project would use AHP as understanding and legitimacy of the multi-criteria were deemed most important to the project, and biases of AHP could be identified.