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ELECTRE III as a support for participatory decision-making on the localisation of waste-treatment plants
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Land Use Policy 23 (2006) 76–85 www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol
ELECTRE III as a support for participatory decision-making on the localisation of waste-treatment plants Maria Franca Norese Dipartimento di Sistemi di produzione ed economia dell’azienda, Politecnico di Torino, Italy Received 5 March 2003; accepted 6 August 2004
Abstract Locating an incinerator and a facility to store ashes and other wastes is a long and complex process in Italy. The District of Turin faced this situation by choosing a participative approach to the problem and by using multi-criteria (MC) analysis as a support for a specific phase of this decision process. A group of 45 decision-makers (local authorities and representatives from the different communities that were involved) worked together with a facilitator group for 16 months to identify the criteria judged relevant to analyse the consequences of the location of a plant. Two MC models—one for the incinerator and the other for the waste-disposal plant—were elaborated and an ELECTRE method used to compare sites and rank them with the aim of selecting the best sites to activate an Environmental Impact Assessment procedure. A team made up of analysts from different organisations supported this work from a technical point of view. This paper proposes an analysis of this participatory decision process and synthesises the difficulties and results of the MC decision aid intervention. r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Multi-criteria analysis and group decision support; Incinerator and waste-disposal plant location; ELECTRE III
Introduction In Italy, the burning of waste is still considered an extremely dangerous activity. At the same time, wastedisposal sites are mainly perceived as being a nuisance for the people living in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Consequently, locating an incinerator and a facility to store ashes and other wastes is a long and complex process. The District of Turin decided to face this problem by choosing a participative approach (in an attempt to avoid conflicting and hostile reactions from the involved communities) and by using a multi-criteria (MC) analysis method to support a specific phase of this decision process. The City of Turin is located in the north-west of Italy and has a population of approximately 900,000. Over the last 40 years, its waste has been disposed of at a huge E-mail address: [email protected] (M.F. Norese). 0264-8377/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2004.08.009
waste site that also serves other municipalities, some of which are situated outside the District. In 1990, the municipal authority decided to close the waste-disposal site before the year 2003, due to the protests from those citizens living around the waste site. In 1998, the District of Turin, which is in charge of policy planning, formulated a programme for waste management1 that divided the territory into three areas (north, west and south-east), each of which would have to be responsible for its own waste management. The District programme included the establishment of some integrated plants (one waste disposal, two wasteselection plants and one incineration plant, the latter being the first in the Turin District) in the south-east area, this being the most important area in terms of population (1,300,000 inhabitants) and therefore of produced waste (650,000 tons per year). 1
Provincia di Torino, Programma Provinciale di gestione dei rifiuti.
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The Programme is the first act of a process that can be explained as a sequence of three phases: ‘macro location’, ‘micro location’ and ‘project development and analysis’. During the first phase, the District of Turin, as the decision-maker, excluded all areas that were unsuitable for this specific location on the basis of some ‘exclusion’ criteria listed in the Programme. The second phase involved the action of other decisionmakers, the Programme implementers, that is the Turin municipal waste-management firm (AMIAT) and three others, each of which is structured as a consortium of towns. These firms (AISA, CATN and CCS) collect waste and manage waste-disposal sites in the south-east part of the District, outside Turin. The four companies were requested to activate the site selection in 1999. This can be considered the ‘micro location’ phase in which they verified the correct use of the exclusion criteria and applied ‘preferential’ and ‘penalty’ criteria (which were also suggested in the Programme) to the previously selected areas. In the end, 38 suitable sites were identified (21 for the waste dump and 17 for the incinerator). In the year 2000, the District of Turin activated a transparent and participative decision process (‘Do not refuse to choose’, NRDS) to anticipate the local feelings towards the plants, evaluate the consequences of each plant location and rank the selected sites. The NRDS can be considered as the conclusion of the ‘micro location’ phase and the first action of the third phase, which is now in progress. The third phase is devoted to the preliminary project development for the environmental impact analysis (EIA) procedure. The plant proponent—a single organisational entity (the managing subject) that the programme defined to construct and manage the future waste-disposal site and incinerator plants—is in charge of obtaining the authorisation from the District. The NRDS project and decision process, the main difficulties that were encountered and the results that were obtained, are described in the following paragraphs. The role of Multi-Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) (Roy, 1985; Vincke, 1992) in this process is highlighted; especially as far as its influence on the communication and decision-making process is concerned. The field of multiple-criteria decision analysis has developed rapidly over the past quarter of the century and in the process, a number of divergent schools of thought have emerged. A range of tools and approaches are available today to assist decision-makers in dealing with the ever-present difficulties of seeking compromise or consensus between conflicting interests and goals, i.e. the ‘‘the multiple criteria’’. A comprehensive yet widely accessible overview of the main streams of thought in this context is proposed in Belton and Steward, (2002). MCDA can be characterised, in this regard, as an approach that proposes an analytical
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structure to the decision-makers in relation to the problem more than the choice of an option and certain rules of an ideal ‘discourse’ in which the preferences are formed or refined during the decision process.
The NRDS Commission and its work In March 2000, the District of Turin activated the NRDS as a participative decision process in the global process. It proposed a form of participation that was applied for the first time in Italy: a non-institutional commission with decision capacity. A concerted group of experts in mediation, participative processes and MC aid (the NRDS facilitator group2) was asked to create the commission and to facilitate the process. During the first 3 months, an ‘outreach’ action was organised by the ‘social participation experts and supported by the mediation expert. The aim was to inform all involved communities about the decision process through a capillary communication and information activity. It was also supposed to create alarm among the local authorities and citizens in the 38 potential sites in order to stimulate people to take timely action and be involved in the commission to allow all local points of view and specific interests to be represented and discussed. This commission was created to involve only a few actors with technical competencies (only the representatives of the four firms AMIAT, AISA, CATN and CCS), an institutional actor (often the mayor) for each municipality that includes or is close to the potential sites and a representative for each area from the main local organisations opposed to the location program. Some of these commission members represented citizens or farmers; others represented more organised groups that were set up for the purpose of preserving natural resources and environmental safety or defending territorial integrity. Altogether, 48 people (the representatives of the firms, 24 institutional actors and 20 representatives from local organisations) agreed to be included in the commission, which was presided over by the Vice President of the District of Turin, who is also responsible for environmental issues. The District of Turin asked the commission to identify location conformity criteria for all the possible 2 Luigi Bobbio, the co-ordinator of the facilitator group, is the mediation expert. The analysis that led to the NRDS project can be found in Bobbio and Zeppetella (1999). Jolanda Romano is the participation expert and her approach to the problem is proposed in Sclavi et al. (2002). The author was involved as the multicriteria expert. Andrea Pillon, Mirta Bonjan and Benedetta Jaretti actively collaborated in the project; Paolo Zeppetella, Laura Bessone, Cristina Oddone and Raffaella Dispensa were involved in some project activities. Franco Tecchiati and Paola Molina of the District of Turin assisted the global project, with the support of Irene Mortari, Marina Loro Piana and Barbara Girardi.
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locations (the 38 sites which were initially identified by AMIAT, AISA, CATN and CCS) and to use an ELECTRE method to rank these locations. ELECTRE is a class of MC methods that compares possible actions in relation to their evaluations on the different criteria and to the decision-maker’s preference (Roy, 1985, 1996). The District explicitly suggested an ELECTRE method, because it can prevent the decision-maker from being asked questions that are too intricate, it can be used in collective decision-making situations (see, for instance, Hokkanen and Salminen, 1997b; Maystre and Bollinger, 1999) and its MC model integrates different types of information in a transparent way and is easily elaborated and understood. The commission’s work resulted in the classification of the sites and in the guidelines of a contract between the involved actors and the future plant manager. The guidelines concerned guarantees, safety, control and compensation. Thirty-five meetings were organised over a period of 16 months (from July 2000 to December 2001). Two MC models were developed during the commission meetings, the first in relation to the location of the waste-disposal plant (nine actions or feasible location sites and 14 criteria) and the second in relation to the location of the incinerator, with 13 actions and 13 criteria. Several technical groups from different organisations (four Departments of the District of Turin, the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection and two Departments of the Turin University and the Politecnico di Torino) participated in the investigation and elaborated reports, which were then proposed to the commission to be analysed, criticised and/or validated. An ELECTRE III method (Roy, 1978, 1990) was chosen from the different ELECTRE family methods, mainly in relation to the imprecision and uncertainty of some available data, and was explained to the Commission in its overall logic. ELECTRE III uses pseudocriteria3 to represent all the different aspects of the problem and starts by comparing each location action with each of the others in relation to each criterion. It aggregates the results of all the comparisons and builds the model for the fuzzy outranking relation according to the notion of concordance and discordance. The method, in the second phase of fuzzy relation exploitation, constructs two classifications (complete preorders) through a descending and an ascending distillation procedure and a final classification of the actions is elaborated as the intersection of the two complete preorders. A sensitivity analysis tests the result by varying the values of the main parameters and observing 3
These are criteria to which one or two thresholds can be assigned in order to reduce the negative impact of imprecise data and preferential uncertainties and to indicate the boundaries of three different situations: indifference, weak preference and strong preference.
the effect on the final outcome. The comparative analysis of the classifications leads to a final robust result or to a model re-analysis (for details on the application of the method see Vincke, 1992; Roy and Bouyssou, 1993). The significance and use of the parameters (weights and thresholds) that the method uses were analysed and discussed by the commission. While the dimensions, criteria and action evaluations resulted from a collective process, the weights, in terms of relative importance of the criteria, were instead an individual expression of preference and each non-technical member proposed an individual set of weights. The site evaluation was developed on the basis of the validated reports by the MC expert of the facilitator group while interacting with the technical groups. These evaluations and the thresholds for some criteria were proposed to the commission to be collectively analysed and discussed during several meetings. Some thresholds were modified in relation to indications made by the commission. The ELECTRE III method was used to compare and rank the alternative sites, in relation to the shared model and the weights that each decision-maker had offered. The results of the ELECTRE applications were presented in December 2001. Each participant received a site ranking according to his set of weights and a second result, which was the synthesis of all the individual expressions of preference. The first result was proposed to each participant to allow a clear reading (alone or with the group the participant represents) of the solution the individual model generated.4 The commission therefore analysed the result in relation to the global system of preference. At this stage, the SURMESURE technique (Simos, 1990; Pictet et al., 1994) was used to illustrate the results in a two-dimensional diagram that the commission considered to be sufficiently explicit. Six sites were selected (two for the incineration plant and four for the waste-disposal site) and suggested to the District of Turin in order to activate and control an EIA procedure for the plant location in the best sites. The models of the ELECTRE application are described in some detail in Norese (2002) and Norese and Toso (2004). A synthesis of the commission’s work is shown in Table 1. Some details on the organisation and control of the meetings as well as the modelling and the investigation activities are described in the following paragraphs.
4 Some of these individual results did not correspond to the decisionmaker’s ‘aspiration’. The individual preferences oriented the result but did not mask the real nature of the location sites that, in some cases, appeared in the first positions of the site ranking also with the decisionmaker’s weights.
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Table 1 The Commission’s main activities July 2000—The official presentation of the Commission September/October 2000 In the first three meetings all the participants present their individual positions. Some interesting elements arise from the debate but the level of contention is very high. The facilitator group proposes an organisation of the Commission’s work as a sequence of alternate sessions, one for the waste-disposal site and the other for the incinerator. November/December 2000 The main characteristics of the two plants are technically illustrated during two meetings. A first list of possible criteria is elaborated for the wastedisposal plant location. The reaction is negative to the technical presentations of some proposed investigation systems. They are perceived as incomplete and not sufficiently accurate. January/March 2001 Waste-disposal plant location: The list of 14 criteria is completed in January, with the definition of the modality and detail level of each technical investigation. After the analysis of the ELECTRE III method (and mainly of the role of the importance of the criteria in the method and in this application) the weights are separately proposed by the Commission members. Incinerator plant location: The passage from a general debate on the possible consequences of this plant location to an MC model is long and difficult. Four meetings are required to pass to a structured work. Some external actions are perceived as contentious. They require an internal debate and sometimes a ‘reflection pause’. April/June 2001 Waste-disposal plant location: The investigation phase starts and the first technical reports are presented to the Commission. Multi-criteria evaluations are analysed and discussed, improved or validated. Incinerator plant location: The list of 13 criteria is completed in May. The investigation phase starts. Some external disturbing actions (related to new strategies from some actors in the process and to the political and administrative elections of this period) require time to debate and define the Commission’s position. July/November 2001 Waste-disposal plant location: The investigation phase is completed, the last technical reports are presented to the Commission and the multi-criteria evaluations are analysed and discussed. Incinerator plant location: The weights of the criteria are separately proposed by the Commission members. All the technical reports are presented to the Commission, while the investigation phase develops. MC evaluations are analysed and discussed, improved or validated. December 2001 ELECTRE III is used to rank the alternative sites. The results are presented to the Commission.
Organisation of the meetings Twenty-four of the 35 meetings were organised around a special set of tasks. The commission had to identify and analyse the possible consequences of two plant locations, elaborate two MC models and require a correct level of investigation, validate each technical report, analyse the ELECTRE III method in its global logic and define its parameters (weights and thresholds). Last but not least, it validated all the technical evaluations and directly evaluated the sites when the technicians produced descriptive reports and not evaluations, ranked the alternative sites and selected the best ones. These results, and above all an attitude to cooperation and the construction of mutual trust and understanding, were obtained with the help of a decision aiding structure, a methodological orienting schemata (Norese, 1995), which was used to explain the MC approach to the problem, its intentions and aims, and to structure the way of working (sequence and nature of each step; decisional and operational roles of the commission, facilitator group and external experts; structure and characteristics of the results), and the
MC method. ELECTRE III was used not only at the end to rank the alternatives, but during all intervention as an operational scheme and communication tool (Norese et al., 1991, 1996) which synthesises temporary as well as final results in a transparent way without reducing the commission’s ‘space’, either at the collective level (each proposal or position was collectively analysed and accepted and explicitly inserted in the model and used by the method or refused), or at the individual level (the preferences of each single member were used separately and were directly correlated to the result). The situation proved to be extremely difficult during the first meetings. When the facilitators reduced the commission’s initial attitude ‘to talking and arguing more than to working’, the collective analysis and explanation of what an MC model is and how an MC method can support a decision-making process stimulated operational participation and a co-operative attitude towards the decision. The collective analysis of the method came to be surprisingly easy. A common understanding of ELECTRE III, its overall logic and significance and use of the required parameters was reached without any difficulty and became a local
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‘language’ which was accepted and shared. The participative attitude of the commission facilitated its complete involvement in the logic of the method and improved the functioning of the MCDA. The author led the operational part of the meeting, while the mediator and the Vice President of the District of Turin led the ‘contentious’ part of the meeting (criticism of the programme for waste management, general requests and observations, protests, threats, debates on the alarming declarations in the newspapers about the nature of the decision process and the role of the commission, consequences of the contemporary political elections on the commissiony). After the official presentation of the commission, the first two meetings were very difficult, mainly because of the great number of participants and of the real conflict between the representatives of two different positions, one oriented towards preserving the quality of life in the countryside and the other of avoiding another local burden on some specific areas. The situation improved, when the facilitator group organised the meetings as a sequence of alternate sessions (one for the wastedisposal site and the other for the incinerator). These were open to all members of the commission but, in reality, were only attended by those who were interested in the theme (25 people on average for the wastedisposal plant and 30 for the incinerator). Another effective move, mostly in answer to the demand for verbalisation (mainly from the members who, in the first meetings, used to almost monopolise the debate talking about themes such as the need of garbage recycling, which were not consistent with the problem of plant location and therefore with the commission’s work), was the drawing up of a synthesis of each previous session. The first syntheses included only the proposals as criteria of different consequences of plant location as the operational part of the debate. The synthesis was intended as a support to the work of the commission, not as an institutional verbalisation (since the commission had been ad hoc created for the NRDS project with decisional capacity but not an institutional role). Each synthesis was presented on a web site5 which included all the news about the commission’s work, information on the plants and analyses of the sites and its attitude to receive new plants. The availability of information on the web was considered necessary to make the process transparent and spread knowledge on this procedure. It was also considered useful as a reference for other similar processes as well as a tool for the Commission to re-analyse each passage of the debate and understand the nature of specific methodological steps.
5
www.provincia.torino.it/ambiente-provto/nrds.
The elimination of all interventions without any operational contribution in the synthesis was received by the majority as a clear message and with this the commission’s work advanced and became ‘quite’ easy and fast in relation to the waste-disposal plant location. This situation offered to the facilitator group the opportunity of testing all the methodological actions in an easier context and approaching the incinerator meetings with the knowledge of the previous experience. Most of the participants were active in the commission’s work, proposing their points of view and debating other proposals, as well as in their communities, analysing documentation, addressing open problems and introducing specific investigations at the commission’s meetings. Their action was essential for the modelling phase of the MCDA intervention. Some of the people who were involved in the first period of organised ‘outreach’ refused to participate in the process, but asked to be informed about the Commission’s work. The web site was also particularly useful in these cases. Some others also refused to participate, but when their sites were selected for the ‘project development and EIA analysis’ phase of the decision process, they used information from the web site to organise their participation at a local level. Modelling activities The models, one for each plant, included all the aspects the Commission judged to be relevant to analyse the consequences of plant location in the proposed sites. These aspects were structured in 14 criteria for the possible locations of the waste-disposal site and 13 for the incinerator plant locations (see Tables 2 and 3). The activities (identification of all significant aspects and elaboration of the formal criteria) were developed in relation to the two models through courses of action that were only similar. The criteria for the waste-disposal plant location were the result of several meetings in which all the involved members proposed their points of view on the negative consequences of a plant location and debated the actual significance of each proposal, the necessity of experts and data to allow a complete and formal definition of the analysed aspect and the state of knowledge concerning each particular aspect. Only the direct contact between the different decisionmakers in the meetings made it possible to present all the individual positions, whether clear and precise or complicated and inconsistent within the context of the work. The debate at each meeting—supported by the facilitator group—led to an explicit declaration of the difficulties, mainly those concerning the interpretation of the other positions, of doubts, uncertainties, preoccupations and also suspicions; it allowed each
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Table 3 Dimensions and criteria for the incinerator site
Local traffic conditions and inherent consequences C1—Accessibility by motorway and railway Optimal, good, fair, sufficient, insufficient C2—Distance from the nearest motorway Unit of measurement: km C3—Impact on the local traffi Not-existent, avoidable, inevitable
Technical aspects C1—Accessibility by motorway and railway High, fair, sufficient, low, very low C2—Incremental traffic impact on local congestion Non-existent, low, medium-low, medium, high C3—Energy saving Score (1–8) C4—Suitability and availability of the area Score (1–8) C5—Flooding risks from minor channels and rivers Score (0–6)
Social equity C4—Presence of environmental ‘‘loads’’ Weighted average environmental pressure (cardinal scale) C5—Results in differential waste collection (1) Less or equal to 15%, (2) more than 15% and less or equal to 25%, (3) more than 25% Natural and Social Environment C6—Population Unit of measurement: number of inhabitants C7—Necessity of new roads or improvement of existing roads Unit of measurement: km C8—Risk to ground-water table Rank (1–8) C9—Impact on landscape Impact degree (1–10) C10—Agricultural value Rank (9–1) C11—Agricultural ‘‘vocation’’ in the territory Scarce, fair, high C12—Natural value Rank (9–1) C13—Size of the site Unit of measurement: m2 C14—Natural habitat protection (1) No natural constraints are present, (2) restocking and capturing zones close to site, (3) oases or biotopes close to site, (4) restocking and capturing zones in the site area, (5) oases or bio topes in the site area
participant to explain a specific point of view and sometimes partially change this point of view. This approach to problem structuring required an enormous amount of time, but led to a reduction in ambiguity and uncertainty of the different positions and interpretations. The dialogue produced essential passages from the chaos of the initial multiple positions to a structured and shared modelling phase. The long debate that developed each time in relation to specific contentious positions or interpretations produced an agreement on the criteria modelling results, the shared elements of these MC models. One of the divergent positions that emerged during the commission’s work is represented in the cognitive map of Fig. 1. The persistence of contentious positions is not seen as a drawback in the MCDA, but only as a reduced possibility of acquiring an operational attitude in the modelling phase. Some clarifying elements can be proposed to moderate the conflict and facilitate the debate. Problem formulation and model structuring have to be assisted in multi-actor contexts and several different approaches are proposed in
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Aspects concerning local development C6—Economic damage to town areas due to the possible decrease of property values Unit of measurement: number of inhabitants C7—Economic damage to agricultural activities Score (0–8) C8—Negative impact on re-qualification or development projects No, yes Environmental aspects C9—Previous environmental ‘‘loads’’ around the site Score (1–9) C10—Important environmental ‘‘loads’’ Score (1–25) C11—Visual impact Score (1–10) Aspects concerning self-sufficiency and social equity C12—Centricity regarding local waste production Unit of measurement: m C13—Site position regarding the borders of the south-east planning area (1) Far from the borders, (2) near the borders (from 0 to 1000 m), (3) on the border and inducing negative effects mainly outside the area
literature (see, for instance, Rosenhead, 1989; Belton and Steward, 2002; Bana e Costa et al., 2002). Some of them are particularly oriented to MC modelling and can be easily integrated with the MC approach to the problem: the strategic choice approach (Friend and Hickling, 1987; Friend, 1989) and MACRAME, proposed in Norese (1995), which was used to elaborate the map of Fig. 1. The participation of the decision-makers is essential to reduce the ambiguity of too general declarations of objectives and constraints and the process of explicit and collective problem formulation becomes easier if all the participants use the same ‘language’. The MCDA’language’ is particularly appropriate for this purpose: it is well structured and supplies a common unambiguous vocabulary (mainly for the criterion and consistent family of criteria concepts) that is sufficiently rich to deal with each and every qualitative and quantitative data and knowledge processing situation and to integrate all these elements into a model which can be rationally tested, easily updated and helpful in communication contexts.
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produce
emissions from the incinerator
a negative impact on people’s health
a plant which is well projected and managed
does not produce
Fig. 1. The conflict map.
imply Emissions from the incinerator
a critical situation for an already polluted site
which means that
the present situation of the different sites is significant as far as both the environmental aspects and social equity are concerned
which can be analyzed in criteria C9 and C10 An incinerator which does not produce dangerous emissions
implies
at least a temporary value reduction of the buildings and some activities
which can be analyzed in criteria C6, C7 and C8. Fig. 2. Criteria generation paths.
Several conceptual elements were proposed during the debate and these often led to new positions and criteria generation steps. Some of these are represented in Fig. 2 in relation to the contentious positions of Fig. 1. The first concept was based on the distinction between ‘‘general consequences of plant activation’’ and ‘‘the specific and/or different consequences in the different sites’’. Focusing attention on the second category made the debate easier and less contentious. Another clarifying element was the distinction between ‘‘consequences, which can be analysed in the commission’’ and ‘‘others, which have to be postponed in the EIA phase’’. This distinction derived mainly from the assumption that the plant project was not available at that moment and that only exact knowledge of the project would allow the correct measurement of some consequences. A similar element was the distinction between ‘‘possible consequences’’ and others, ‘‘which surely will occur’’.
All different points of view were structured in problem dimensions (effects on the local traffic, social equity and environmental consequences) and conclusively formalised in criteria for which a specific investigation was activated. This last technical action was not developed during the commission meetings and only the results were presented to the commission and then analysed. The course of action was in part different during the meetings related to the incinerator plant, because the contentiousness was more evident and the kind of plant more ‘disquietingly’ disturbing. The same approach was activated in these meetings but required much more time. At the end of February 2001, with a delay of 4 months in comparison to the waste-disposal plant analysis, the request to elaborate a structured list of possible criteria and investigation procedures was presented to the MC decision expert during a meeting,
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discussed and accepted. This proposal activated a different procedure and 2 months of work (the commission’s meetings excluded), in which all the participants analysed the first list of criteria (related to the problem dimensions: technical aspects, aspects related to the environment and social equity) and proposed new criteria or modifications of the old ones by letter, email or fax. A new list of criteria, documenting the addition and modification proposals, was presented and discussed in two meetings during March and April—and in May the MC model was completed. Organisation of the investigation activities When the list of criteria was completed, the investigation phase started. It included activities, which require time and technical expertise: the site analysis, works concerning indicator elaboration and measurement and report development. These investigation activities are a specific element of each MCDA intervention, but in this case they became more demanding for several related reasons. The two models and the large number of criteria induced 27 investigation projects (one project for each criterion, 14 criteria for the possible waste-disposal site locations and 13 for the incinerator plant locations) and the activation of different technical groups that investigated, drew up technical reports and analysed all the questions, observations, suggestions and critiques voiced by the decision-makers, i.e. the commission. MCDA interventions often involve a professional group which co-ordinates the investigation activities and controls the results. In this case, the District of Turin chose another approach to the problem and four Services of the District actively participated in the work (the EIA Service of the Environment Department, the Main Transportation Infrastructures Service of the Transportation Department, the Rural Development Service of the Agriculture Department and the Cartography Service of the Planning Department), but other Services were involved on some occasions. The other organisations that were involved were ARPA, the regional agency for environmental protection, with its EIA and Nature Conservation Department and three Territorial Services, the Department of Geology from the University of Turin and the Department of Energetics from the Politecnico di Torino (Technical University). The choice of this technical structure, initially mainly aimed at limiting costs, produced a time delay during the first months and several difficulties. In regular EIA procedures, technicians from these groups participate in some meetings at the Environmental Department of the District of Turin and voice their opinions. In the NRDS case, their role was defined during the work in relation to the complexity of each
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investigation (one or more criteria, the presence of structured data or the necessity of data acquisition, the presence of reference models in literature or a new investigation contexty). The main difficulties in the investigation phase were the consequences that no specific requirements were initially formulated and the innovative nature of the NRDS project was not discussed with the technical groups. The interaction with a participation process was completely new for almost all the Services and unusual for the Regional Agency and the University Departments. The commission required an explicit presentation of their investigative approach and the nature of any possible results. Each of the technical groups proposed a different methodological approach and in some cases the Commission agreed with these presentations, while in others the reaction was clearly negative. The communication between experts and representatives became difficult and sometimes even critical because it led to open conflict and loss of confidence or misunderstanding. The ‘MC language’ was used as a ‘communication space’ between the experts and representatives, a common language to express requirements and to explain investigation results. The concept of criterion, i.e. of the operational translation of data, indicators, judgements or preferences into a tool that allows the comparison of alternative actions in relation to a specific point of view or problem dimension, is not easy to explain in a few words and the experts and representatives only learned its real meaning when they worked together and oriented the investigation results towards an MC model. The facilitator group became the co-ordinator of all the technical works and the relationships between the two decisional and technical structures were organised in more formal terms for the routine activities. Investigation reports from the technicians were written, presented and analysed during the meetings. The period of time between two subsequent meetings (a fortnight on average) was used to analyse the documents in the different municipalities and by the citizen associations, and to prepare written observations, suggestions and criticism. The organisations that were involved in the technical support analysed all the material and elaborated written answers. Only in exceptional cases were meetings organised—when questions concerning technical work became too complicated or doubts too persistent to be resolved by post, fax, telephone or email. This process of collective learning (to elaborate and validate an enormous quantity of documentation and to develop a formal model) and the involvement of the technical structure in this participative process (which is not easy in the context of professional advice) produced important results, apart from a validated MC model: a
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clear reduction in time over the last months, when the convergence towards a final result became imperative and communication between the commission and the technical groups became easier and acquired an operational attitude, and a general improvement of the internal procedures of knowledge acquisition, filtering and communication in the District.
which was recently used in a case of water management (Wolfler-Calvo and Paruccini, 2001). The attention to the operational and ‘philosophical’ meaning of each MC method allows useful implementations and successful interventions of decision aiding to be made.
References Concluding remarks This paper describes a phase of the decision process initiated by the District of Turin to evaluate and rank some selected possible plant location sites. The use of a multi-criteria analysis method in this process (the NRDS project) is analysed in relation to this rather new form of participation, that resulted in a decisional but not institutional commission of more than 40 people, and the action of a facilitator group composed of experts in mediation, participative processes and MC decision aid. The long time that was necessary for the commission to reach a conclusion can be seen as the main weakness of this participative action. It is possible that external factors (in this case, mainly general and local council elections and the consequent intensive attention of the media during this period) have destabilised a process that lasted sixteen months. The investigation activities were long and time consuming in relation to the first model, but quicker and more effective for the second. All the technical groups had the opportunity of calibrating the correct detail level and their reports can now be used as a reference for similar activities. The relationship between the sector experts and commission was very difficult on different occasions. This element should be analysed carefully to improve the action and reduce risks of conflict and time dilation. There were different reasons for the hold up. The initial meetings that did not produce operational results were essential for the elaboration of a co-operative attitude and some ‘‘reflective pauses’’—which were proposed to debate and not to operate in the more critical period—allowed the explicit declaration of doubts and preoccupations and the passage to collective positions and decisions. The application of an ELECTRE III method was well suited to the situation. (In similar cases other outranking methods, see, for instance, PROMETHEE in Hokkanen and Salminen (1997a), produced important results.) ELECTRE and the SURMESURE illustration of its sensitivity analysis are powerful in multi-actor contexts: interesting comments are proposed in Rogers et al. (2000) and Soncini-Sessa et al. (2001). When interaction with the actors is essential, mainly because the uncertainties in the scientific inputs are fundamental to the policy options, NAIADE (Munda, 1995) is a different and interesting methodological approach,
Bana e Costa, C.A., da Costa-Lobo, M.L., Ramos, I.A., Vansnick, J.C., 2002. Multicriteria approach for strategic town planning. In: Bouyssou, R.R., et al. (Eds.), Aiding Decisions with Multiple Criteria. Essays in Honor of Bernard Roy. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell. Belton, V., Steward, T., 2002. Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis. An Integrated Approach. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell. Bobbio, L., Zeppetella, A., 1999. Perche´ proprio qui? Grandi opere e opposizioni locali. Milano, Franco Angeli. Friend, J., 1989. The strategic choice approach. In: Rosenhead, J. (Ed.), Rational Analysis for a Problematic World: Problem Structuring Methods for Complexity, Uncertainty and Conflict. Wiley, Chichester. Friend, J., Hickling, A., 1987. Planning Under Pressure. Pergamon Press, Oxford. Hokkanen, J., Salminen, P., 1997a. Locating a waste treatment facility by multicriteria analysis. Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis 6, 175–184. Hokkanen, J., Salminen, P., 1997b. ELECTRE III and IV decision aids in an environmental problem. Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis 6, 215–226. Maystre, L.Y., Bollinger, D., 1999. Aide a` la Negotiation Multicrite`re: Pratique et Conseils. Presse Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, Lausanne. Munda, G., 1995. Multicriteria Evaluation in a Fuzzy Environment. Theory and Applications in Ecological Economics. Physica-Verlag, Heidelberg. Norese, M.F., 1995. MACRAME: a problem formulation and model structuring assistant in multiactorial contexts. European Journal of Operational Research 84, 25–34. Norese, M.F., 1996. A process perspective and multicriteria approach in decision-aiding contexts. Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis 5, 133–144. Norese, M.F., 2002. Participative approach, Multicriteria analysis and technological support. Colloque Ge´oAD Ge´omatique et Aide a` la De´cision. 21 Novembre 2002, Universite´ Paris Dauphine’, LAMSADE, Paris, pp. 61–74. Norese, M.F., Toso, F., 2004. Group decision and distributed technical support. International Transactions in Operational Research 11, 394–417. Norese, M.F., 1991. A multiple criteria approach to complex situations. In: Jackson, M.C., et al. (Eds.), Systems Thinking in Europe. Plenum Press, New York, pp. 361–369. Pictet, J., Maystre, L.Y., Simos, J., 1994. SURMESURE: an instrument for representation and interpretation of ELECTRE and PROMETHEE method results. In: Paruccini, M. (Ed.), Applying Multiple Criteria Aid for Decision to Environmental Management. Kluwer, Collection ‘Eurocourses’, Dordrecht, pp. 291–304. Rogers, M., Bruen, M., Maystre, L.Y., 2000. ELECTRE and Decision Support: Methods and Applications in Engineering and Infrastructure Investment. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell. Rosenhead, J. (Ed.), 1989, Rational Analysis for a Problematic World: Problem Structuring Methods for Complexity, Uncertainty and Conflict. Wiley, Chichester.
ARTICLE IN PRESS M.F. Norese / Land Use Policy 23 (2006) 76–85 Roy, B., 1978. Electre III: Un algorithme de classements fonde´ sur une repre´sentation floue en pre´sence de crite`res multiples. Cahier du CERO 20, 3–24. Roy, B., 1985. Methodologie Multicrite`re d’Aide a la Decision. Economica, Paris. Roy, B., 1990. The outranking approach and the foundations of ELECTRE methods. In: Bana e Costa, C.A. (Ed.), Readings in Multiple Criteria Decision Aid. Springer, Heidelberg, pp. 115–184. Roy, B., 1996. Multicriteria Methodology for Decision Aiding. Kluwer, Dordrecht. Roy, B., Bouyssou, D., 1993. Aide Multicrite`re a` la De´cision: Me´thodes et Cas. Economica, Paris. Sclavi, M., Romano, I., Guercio, S., Pillon, A., Robiglio, M., Toussaint, I., 2002. AVVENTURE URBANE, progettare la citta` con gli abitanti. ELE`UTHERA, Milano.
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Simos, J., 1990. Evaluer l’impact sur l’environment. Presse Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, Lausanne. Soncini-Sessa, R., Losa, F.B., Canuti, D., Colorni, A., Laniado, E., Rizzoli, A., Villa, L., Vitali, B., Weber, E., 2001. Multicriteria analysis in the planning and management of a multipurpose trasnational water system: the case of Lake Maggiore, ItalySwitzerland. In: Colorni, A., Parruccini, M., Roy, B. (Eds.), AMCD-A Aide Multi Crite´re a` la De`cision Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding. European Commission Joint Research Centre, Luxembourg, pp. 315–328. Vincke, P., 1992. Multicriteria Decision-Aid. Wiley, Chichester. Wolfler-Calvo, R., Paruccini, M., 2001. Applying MCDA to water management: the Basento case study. In: Colorni, A., Paruccini, M., Roy, B. (Eds.), A-MCD-A Aide Multi Crite´re a` la De`cision Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding. European Commission Joint Research Centre, Luxembourg, pp. 355–372.
Land Use Policy 23 (2006) 76–85 www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol
ELECTRE III as a support for participatory decision-making on the localisation of waste-treatment plants Maria Franca Norese Dipartimento di Sistemi di produzione ed economia dell’azienda, Politecnico di Torino, Italy Received 5 March 2003; accepted 6 August 2004
Abstract Locating an incinerator and a facility to store ashes and other wastes is a long and complex process in Italy. The District of Turin faced this situation by choosing a participative approach to the problem and by using multi-criteria (MC) analysis as a support for a specific phase of this decision process. A group of 45 decision-makers (local authorities and representatives from the different communities that were involved) worked together with a facilitator group for 16 months to identify the criteria judged relevant to analyse the consequences of the location of a plant. Two MC models—one for the incinerator and the other for the waste-disposal plant—were elaborated and an ELECTRE method used to compare sites and rank them with the aim of selecting the best sites to activate an Environmental Impact Assessment procedure. A team made up of analysts from different organisations supported this work from a technical point of view. This paper proposes an analysis of this participatory decision process and synthesises the difficulties and results of the MC decision aid intervention. r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Multi-criteria analysis and group decision support; Incinerator and waste-disposal plant location; ELECTRE III
Introduction In Italy, the burning of waste is still considered an extremely dangerous activity. At the same time, wastedisposal sites are mainly perceived as being a nuisance for the people living in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Consequently, locating an incinerator and a facility to store ashes and other wastes is a long and complex process. The District of Turin decided to face this problem by choosing a participative approach (in an attempt to avoid conflicting and hostile reactions from the involved communities) and by using a multi-criteria (MC) analysis method to support a specific phase of this decision process. The City of Turin is located in the north-west of Italy and has a population of approximately 900,000. Over the last 40 years, its waste has been disposed of at a huge E-mail address: [email protected] (M.F. Norese). 0264-8377/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2004.08.009
waste site that also serves other municipalities, some of which are situated outside the District. In 1990, the municipal authority decided to close the waste-disposal site before the year 2003, due to the protests from those citizens living around the waste site. In 1998, the District of Turin, which is in charge of policy planning, formulated a programme for waste management1 that divided the territory into three areas (north, west and south-east), each of which would have to be responsible for its own waste management. The District programme included the establishment of some integrated plants (one waste disposal, two wasteselection plants and one incineration plant, the latter being the first in the Turin District) in the south-east area, this being the most important area in terms of population (1,300,000 inhabitants) and therefore of produced waste (650,000 tons per year). 1
Provincia di Torino, Programma Provinciale di gestione dei rifiuti.
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The Programme is the first act of a process that can be explained as a sequence of three phases: ‘macro location’, ‘micro location’ and ‘project development and analysis’. During the first phase, the District of Turin, as the decision-maker, excluded all areas that were unsuitable for this specific location on the basis of some ‘exclusion’ criteria listed in the Programme. The second phase involved the action of other decisionmakers, the Programme implementers, that is the Turin municipal waste-management firm (AMIAT) and three others, each of which is structured as a consortium of towns. These firms (AISA, CATN and CCS) collect waste and manage waste-disposal sites in the south-east part of the District, outside Turin. The four companies were requested to activate the site selection in 1999. This can be considered the ‘micro location’ phase in which they verified the correct use of the exclusion criteria and applied ‘preferential’ and ‘penalty’ criteria (which were also suggested in the Programme) to the previously selected areas. In the end, 38 suitable sites were identified (21 for the waste dump and 17 for the incinerator). In the year 2000, the District of Turin activated a transparent and participative decision process (‘Do not refuse to choose’, NRDS) to anticipate the local feelings towards the plants, evaluate the consequences of each plant location and rank the selected sites. The NRDS can be considered as the conclusion of the ‘micro location’ phase and the first action of the third phase, which is now in progress. The third phase is devoted to the preliminary project development for the environmental impact analysis (EIA) procedure. The plant proponent—a single organisational entity (the managing subject) that the programme defined to construct and manage the future waste-disposal site and incinerator plants—is in charge of obtaining the authorisation from the District. The NRDS project and decision process, the main difficulties that were encountered and the results that were obtained, are described in the following paragraphs. The role of Multi-Criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) (Roy, 1985; Vincke, 1992) in this process is highlighted; especially as far as its influence on the communication and decision-making process is concerned. The field of multiple-criteria decision analysis has developed rapidly over the past quarter of the century and in the process, a number of divergent schools of thought have emerged. A range of tools and approaches are available today to assist decision-makers in dealing with the ever-present difficulties of seeking compromise or consensus between conflicting interests and goals, i.e. the ‘‘the multiple criteria’’. A comprehensive yet widely accessible overview of the main streams of thought in this context is proposed in Belton and Steward, (2002). MCDA can be characterised, in this regard, as an approach that proposes an analytical
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structure to the decision-makers in relation to the problem more than the choice of an option and certain rules of an ideal ‘discourse’ in which the preferences are formed or refined during the decision process.
The NRDS Commission and its work In March 2000, the District of Turin activated the NRDS as a participative decision process in the global process. It proposed a form of participation that was applied for the first time in Italy: a non-institutional commission with decision capacity. A concerted group of experts in mediation, participative processes and MC aid (the NRDS facilitator group2) was asked to create the commission and to facilitate the process. During the first 3 months, an ‘outreach’ action was organised by the ‘social participation experts and supported by the mediation expert. The aim was to inform all involved communities about the decision process through a capillary communication and information activity. It was also supposed to create alarm among the local authorities and citizens in the 38 potential sites in order to stimulate people to take timely action and be involved in the commission to allow all local points of view and specific interests to be represented and discussed. This commission was created to involve only a few actors with technical competencies (only the representatives of the four firms AMIAT, AISA, CATN and CCS), an institutional actor (often the mayor) for each municipality that includes or is close to the potential sites and a representative for each area from the main local organisations opposed to the location program. Some of these commission members represented citizens or farmers; others represented more organised groups that were set up for the purpose of preserving natural resources and environmental safety or defending territorial integrity. Altogether, 48 people (the representatives of the firms, 24 institutional actors and 20 representatives from local organisations) agreed to be included in the commission, which was presided over by the Vice President of the District of Turin, who is also responsible for environmental issues. The District of Turin asked the commission to identify location conformity criteria for all the possible 2 Luigi Bobbio, the co-ordinator of the facilitator group, is the mediation expert. The analysis that led to the NRDS project can be found in Bobbio and Zeppetella (1999). Jolanda Romano is the participation expert and her approach to the problem is proposed in Sclavi et al. (2002). The author was involved as the multicriteria expert. Andrea Pillon, Mirta Bonjan and Benedetta Jaretti actively collaborated in the project; Paolo Zeppetella, Laura Bessone, Cristina Oddone and Raffaella Dispensa were involved in some project activities. Franco Tecchiati and Paola Molina of the District of Turin assisted the global project, with the support of Irene Mortari, Marina Loro Piana and Barbara Girardi.
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locations (the 38 sites which were initially identified by AMIAT, AISA, CATN and CCS) and to use an ELECTRE method to rank these locations. ELECTRE is a class of MC methods that compares possible actions in relation to their evaluations on the different criteria and to the decision-maker’s preference (Roy, 1985, 1996). The District explicitly suggested an ELECTRE method, because it can prevent the decision-maker from being asked questions that are too intricate, it can be used in collective decision-making situations (see, for instance, Hokkanen and Salminen, 1997b; Maystre and Bollinger, 1999) and its MC model integrates different types of information in a transparent way and is easily elaborated and understood. The commission’s work resulted in the classification of the sites and in the guidelines of a contract between the involved actors and the future plant manager. The guidelines concerned guarantees, safety, control and compensation. Thirty-five meetings were organised over a period of 16 months (from July 2000 to December 2001). Two MC models were developed during the commission meetings, the first in relation to the location of the waste-disposal plant (nine actions or feasible location sites and 14 criteria) and the second in relation to the location of the incinerator, with 13 actions and 13 criteria. Several technical groups from different organisations (four Departments of the District of Turin, the Regional Agency for Environmental Protection and two Departments of the Turin University and the Politecnico di Torino) participated in the investigation and elaborated reports, which were then proposed to the commission to be analysed, criticised and/or validated. An ELECTRE III method (Roy, 1978, 1990) was chosen from the different ELECTRE family methods, mainly in relation to the imprecision and uncertainty of some available data, and was explained to the Commission in its overall logic. ELECTRE III uses pseudocriteria3 to represent all the different aspects of the problem and starts by comparing each location action with each of the others in relation to each criterion. It aggregates the results of all the comparisons and builds the model for the fuzzy outranking relation according to the notion of concordance and discordance. The method, in the second phase of fuzzy relation exploitation, constructs two classifications (complete preorders) through a descending and an ascending distillation procedure and a final classification of the actions is elaborated as the intersection of the two complete preorders. A sensitivity analysis tests the result by varying the values of the main parameters and observing 3
These are criteria to which one or two thresholds can be assigned in order to reduce the negative impact of imprecise data and preferential uncertainties and to indicate the boundaries of three different situations: indifference, weak preference and strong preference.
the effect on the final outcome. The comparative analysis of the classifications leads to a final robust result or to a model re-analysis (for details on the application of the method see Vincke, 1992; Roy and Bouyssou, 1993). The significance and use of the parameters (weights and thresholds) that the method uses were analysed and discussed by the commission. While the dimensions, criteria and action evaluations resulted from a collective process, the weights, in terms of relative importance of the criteria, were instead an individual expression of preference and each non-technical member proposed an individual set of weights. The site evaluation was developed on the basis of the validated reports by the MC expert of the facilitator group while interacting with the technical groups. These evaluations and the thresholds for some criteria were proposed to the commission to be collectively analysed and discussed during several meetings. Some thresholds were modified in relation to indications made by the commission. The ELECTRE III method was used to compare and rank the alternative sites, in relation to the shared model and the weights that each decision-maker had offered. The results of the ELECTRE applications were presented in December 2001. Each participant received a site ranking according to his set of weights and a second result, which was the synthesis of all the individual expressions of preference. The first result was proposed to each participant to allow a clear reading (alone or with the group the participant represents) of the solution the individual model generated.4 The commission therefore analysed the result in relation to the global system of preference. At this stage, the SURMESURE technique (Simos, 1990; Pictet et al., 1994) was used to illustrate the results in a two-dimensional diagram that the commission considered to be sufficiently explicit. Six sites were selected (two for the incineration plant and four for the waste-disposal site) and suggested to the District of Turin in order to activate and control an EIA procedure for the plant location in the best sites. The models of the ELECTRE application are described in some detail in Norese (2002) and Norese and Toso (2004). A synthesis of the commission’s work is shown in Table 1. Some details on the organisation and control of the meetings as well as the modelling and the investigation activities are described in the following paragraphs.
4 Some of these individual results did not correspond to the decisionmaker’s ‘aspiration’. The individual preferences oriented the result but did not mask the real nature of the location sites that, in some cases, appeared in the first positions of the site ranking also with the decisionmaker’s weights.
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Table 1 The Commission’s main activities July 2000—The official presentation of the Commission September/October 2000 In the first three meetings all the participants present their individual positions. Some interesting elements arise from the debate but the level of contention is very high. The facilitator group proposes an organisation of the Commission’s work as a sequence of alternate sessions, one for the waste-disposal site and the other for the incinerator. November/December 2000 The main characteristics of the two plants are technically illustrated during two meetings. A first list of possible criteria is elaborated for the wastedisposal plant location. The reaction is negative to the technical presentations of some proposed investigation systems. They are perceived as incomplete and not sufficiently accurate. January/March 2001 Waste-disposal plant location: The list of 14 criteria is completed in January, with the definition of the modality and detail level of each technical investigation. After the analysis of the ELECTRE III method (and mainly of the role of the importance of the criteria in the method and in this application) the weights are separately proposed by the Commission members. Incinerator plant location: The passage from a general debate on the possible consequences of this plant location to an MC model is long and difficult. Four meetings are required to pass to a structured work. Some external actions are perceived as contentious. They require an internal debate and sometimes a ‘reflection pause’. April/June 2001 Waste-disposal plant location: The investigation phase starts and the first technical reports are presented to the Commission. Multi-criteria evaluations are analysed and discussed, improved or validated. Incinerator plant location: The list of 13 criteria is completed in May. The investigation phase starts. Some external disturbing actions (related to new strategies from some actors in the process and to the political and administrative elections of this period) require time to debate and define the Commission’s position. July/November 2001 Waste-disposal plant location: The investigation phase is completed, the last technical reports are presented to the Commission and the multi-criteria evaluations are analysed and discussed. Incinerator plant location: The weights of the criteria are separately proposed by the Commission members. All the technical reports are presented to the Commission, while the investigation phase develops. MC evaluations are analysed and discussed, improved or validated. December 2001 ELECTRE III is used to rank the alternative sites. The results are presented to the Commission.
Organisation of the meetings Twenty-four of the 35 meetings were organised around a special set of tasks. The commission had to identify and analyse the possible consequences of two plant locations, elaborate two MC models and require a correct level of investigation, validate each technical report, analyse the ELECTRE III method in its global logic and define its parameters (weights and thresholds). Last but not least, it validated all the technical evaluations and directly evaluated the sites when the technicians produced descriptive reports and not evaluations, ranked the alternative sites and selected the best ones. These results, and above all an attitude to cooperation and the construction of mutual trust and understanding, were obtained with the help of a decision aiding structure, a methodological orienting schemata (Norese, 1995), which was used to explain the MC approach to the problem, its intentions and aims, and to structure the way of working (sequence and nature of each step; decisional and operational roles of the commission, facilitator group and external experts; structure and characteristics of the results), and the
MC method. ELECTRE III was used not only at the end to rank the alternatives, but during all intervention as an operational scheme and communication tool (Norese et al., 1991, 1996) which synthesises temporary as well as final results in a transparent way without reducing the commission’s ‘space’, either at the collective level (each proposal or position was collectively analysed and accepted and explicitly inserted in the model and used by the method or refused), or at the individual level (the preferences of each single member were used separately and were directly correlated to the result). The situation proved to be extremely difficult during the first meetings. When the facilitators reduced the commission’s initial attitude ‘to talking and arguing more than to working’, the collective analysis and explanation of what an MC model is and how an MC method can support a decision-making process stimulated operational participation and a co-operative attitude towards the decision. The collective analysis of the method came to be surprisingly easy. A common understanding of ELECTRE III, its overall logic and significance and use of the required parameters was reached without any difficulty and became a local
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‘language’ which was accepted and shared. The participative attitude of the commission facilitated its complete involvement in the logic of the method and improved the functioning of the MCDA. The author led the operational part of the meeting, while the mediator and the Vice President of the District of Turin led the ‘contentious’ part of the meeting (criticism of the programme for waste management, general requests and observations, protests, threats, debates on the alarming declarations in the newspapers about the nature of the decision process and the role of the commission, consequences of the contemporary political elections on the commissiony). After the official presentation of the commission, the first two meetings were very difficult, mainly because of the great number of participants and of the real conflict between the representatives of two different positions, one oriented towards preserving the quality of life in the countryside and the other of avoiding another local burden on some specific areas. The situation improved, when the facilitator group organised the meetings as a sequence of alternate sessions (one for the wastedisposal site and the other for the incinerator). These were open to all members of the commission but, in reality, were only attended by those who were interested in the theme (25 people on average for the wastedisposal plant and 30 for the incinerator). Another effective move, mostly in answer to the demand for verbalisation (mainly from the members who, in the first meetings, used to almost monopolise the debate talking about themes such as the need of garbage recycling, which were not consistent with the problem of plant location and therefore with the commission’s work), was the drawing up of a synthesis of each previous session. The first syntheses included only the proposals as criteria of different consequences of plant location as the operational part of the debate. The synthesis was intended as a support to the work of the commission, not as an institutional verbalisation (since the commission had been ad hoc created for the NRDS project with decisional capacity but not an institutional role). Each synthesis was presented on a web site5 which included all the news about the commission’s work, information on the plants and analyses of the sites and its attitude to receive new plants. The availability of information on the web was considered necessary to make the process transparent and spread knowledge on this procedure. It was also considered useful as a reference for other similar processes as well as a tool for the Commission to re-analyse each passage of the debate and understand the nature of specific methodological steps.
5
www.provincia.torino.it/ambiente-provto/nrds.
The elimination of all interventions without any operational contribution in the synthesis was received by the majority as a clear message and with this the commission’s work advanced and became ‘quite’ easy and fast in relation to the waste-disposal plant location. This situation offered to the facilitator group the opportunity of testing all the methodological actions in an easier context and approaching the incinerator meetings with the knowledge of the previous experience. Most of the participants were active in the commission’s work, proposing their points of view and debating other proposals, as well as in their communities, analysing documentation, addressing open problems and introducing specific investigations at the commission’s meetings. Their action was essential for the modelling phase of the MCDA intervention. Some of the people who were involved in the first period of organised ‘outreach’ refused to participate in the process, but asked to be informed about the Commission’s work. The web site was also particularly useful in these cases. Some others also refused to participate, but when their sites were selected for the ‘project development and EIA analysis’ phase of the decision process, they used information from the web site to organise their participation at a local level. Modelling activities The models, one for each plant, included all the aspects the Commission judged to be relevant to analyse the consequences of plant location in the proposed sites. These aspects were structured in 14 criteria for the possible locations of the waste-disposal site and 13 for the incinerator plant locations (see Tables 2 and 3). The activities (identification of all significant aspects and elaboration of the formal criteria) were developed in relation to the two models through courses of action that were only similar. The criteria for the waste-disposal plant location were the result of several meetings in which all the involved members proposed their points of view on the negative consequences of a plant location and debated the actual significance of each proposal, the necessity of experts and data to allow a complete and formal definition of the analysed aspect and the state of knowledge concerning each particular aspect. Only the direct contact between the different decisionmakers in the meetings made it possible to present all the individual positions, whether clear and precise or complicated and inconsistent within the context of the work. The debate at each meeting—supported by the facilitator group—led to an explicit declaration of the difficulties, mainly those concerning the interpretation of the other positions, of doubts, uncertainties, preoccupations and also suspicions; it allowed each
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Table 3 Dimensions and criteria for the incinerator site
Local traffic conditions and inherent consequences C1—Accessibility by motorway and railway Optimal, good, fair, sufficient, insufficient C2—Distance from the nearest motorway Unit of measurement: km C3—Impact on the local traffi Not-existent, avoidable, inevitable
Technical aspects C1—Accessibility by motorway and railway High, fair, sufficient, low, very low C2—Incremental traffic impact on local congestion Non-existent, low, medium-low, medium, high C3—Energy saving Score (1–8) C4—Suitability and availability of the area Score (1–8) C5—Flooding risks from minor channels and rivers Score (0–6)
Social equity C4—Presence of environmental ‘‘loads’’ Weighted average environmental pressure (cardinal scale) C5—Results in differential waste collection (1) Less or equal to 15%, (2) more than 15% and less or equal to 25%, (3) more than 25% Natural and Social Environment C6—Population Unit of measurement: number of inhabitants C7—Necessity of new roads or improvement of existing roads Unit of measurement: km C8—Risk to ground-water table Rank (1–8) C9—Impact on landscape Impact degree (1–10) C10—Agricultural value Rank (9–1) C11—Agricultural ‘‘vocation’’ in the territory Scarce, fair, high C12—Natural value Rank (9–1) C13—Size of the site Unit of measurement: m2 C14—Natural habitat protection (1) No natural constraints are present, (2) restocking and capturing zones close to site, (3) oases or biotopes close to site, (4) restocking and capturing zones in the site area, (5) oases or bio topes in the site area
participant to explain a specific point of view and sometimes partially change this point of view. This approach to problem structuring required an enormous amount of time, but led to a reduction in ambiguity and uncertainty of the different positions and interpretations. The dialogue produced essential passages from the chaos of the initial multiple positions to a structured and shared modelling phase. The long debate that developed each time in relation to specific contentious positions or interpretations produced an agreement on the criteria modelling results, the shared elements of these MC models. One of the divergent positions that emerged during the commission’s work is represented in the cognitive map of Fig. 1. The persistence of contentious positions is not seen as a drawback in the MCDA, but only as a reduced possibility of acquiring an operational attitude in the modelling phase. Some clarifying elements can be proposed to moderate the conflict and facilitate the debate. Problem formulation and model structuring have to be assisted in multi-actor contexts and several different approaches are proposed in
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Aspects concerning local development C6—Economic damage to town areas due to the possible decrease of property values Unit of measurement: number of inhabitants C7—Economic damage to agricultural activities Score (0–8) C8—Negative impact on re-qualification or development projects No, yes Environmental aspects C9—Previous environmental ‘‘loads’’ around the site Score (1–9) C10—Important environmental ‘‘loads’’ Score (1–25) C11—Visual impact Score (1–10) Aspects concerning self-sufficiency and social equity C12—Centricity regarding local waste production Unit of measurement: m C13—Site position regarding the borders of the south-east planning area (1) Far from the borders, (2) near the borders (from 0 to 1000 m), (3) on the border and inducing negative effects mainly outside the area
literature (see, for instance, Rosenhead, 1989; Belton and Steward, 2002; Bana e Costa et al., 2002). Some of them are particularly oriented to MC modelling and can be easily integrated with the MC approach to the problem: the strategic choice approach (Friend and Hickling, 1987; Friend, 1989) and MACRAME, proposed in Norese (1995), which was used to elaborate the map of Fig. 1. The participation of the decision-makers is essential to reduce the ambiguity of too general declarations of objectives and constraints and the process of explicit and collective problem formulation becomes easier if all the participants use the same ‘language’. The MCDA’language’ is particularly appropriate for this purpose: it is well structured and supplies a common unambiguous vocabulary (mainly for the criterion and consistent family of criteria concepts) that is sufficiently rich to deal with each and every qualitative and quantitative data and knowledge processing situation and to integrate all these elements into a model which can be rationally tested, easily updated and helpful in communication contexts.
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produce
emissions from the incinerator
a negative impact on people’s health
a plant which is well projected and managed
does not produce
Fig. 1. The conflict map.
imply Emissions from the incinerator
a critical situation for an already polluted site
which means that
the present situation of the different sites is significant as far as both the environmental aspects and social equity are concerned
which can be analyzed in criteria C9 and C10 An incinerator which does not produce dangerous emissions
implies
at least a temporary value reduction of the buildings and some activities
which can be analyzed in criteria C6, C7 and C8. Fig. 2. Criteria generation paths.
Several conceptual elements were proposed during the debate and these often led to new positions and criteria generation steps. Some of these are represented in Fig. 2 in relation to the contentious positions of Fig. 1. The first concept was based on the distinction between ‘‘general consequences of plant activation’’ and ‘‘the specific and/or different consequences in the different sites’’. Focusing attention on the second category made the debate easier and less contentious. Another clarifying element was the distinction between ‘‘consequences, which can be analysed in the commission’’ and ‘‘others, which have to be postponed in the EIA phase’’. This distinction derived mainly from the assumption that the plant project was not available at that moment and that only exact knowledge of the project would allow the correct measurement of some consequences. A similar element was the distinction between ‘‘possible consequences’’ and others, ‘‘which surely will occur’’.
All different points of view were structured in problem dimensions (effects on the local traffic, social equity and environmental consequences) and conclusively formalised in criteria for which a specific investigation was activated. This last technical action was not developed during the commission meetings and only the results were presented to the commission and then analysed. The course of action was in part different during the meetings related to the incinerator plant, because the contentiousness was more evident and the kind of plant more ‘disquietingly’ disturbing. The same approach was activated in these meetings but required much more time. At the end of February 2001, with a delay of 4 months in comparison to the waste-disposal plant analysis, the request to elaborate a structured list of possible criteria and investigation procedures was presented to the MC decision expert during a meeting,
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discussed and accepted. This proposal activated a different procedure and 2 months of work (the commission’s meetings excluded), in which all the participants analysed the first list of criteria (related to the problem dimensions: technical aspects, aspects related to the environment and social equity) and proposed new criteria or modifications of the old ones by letter, email or fax. A new list of criteria, documenting the addition and modification proposals, was presented and discussed in two meetings during March and April—and in May the MC model was completed. Organisation of the investigation activities When the list of criteria was completed, the investigation phase started. It included activities, which require time and technical expertise: the site analysis, works concerning indicator elaboration and measurement and report development. These investigation activities are a specific element of each MCDA intervention, but in this case they became more demanding for several related reasons. The two models and the large number of criteria induced 27 investigation projects (one project for each criterion, 14 criteria for the possible waste-disposal site locations and 13 for the incinerator plant locations) and the activation of different technical groups that investigated, drew up technical reports and analysed all the questions, observations, suggestions and critiques voiced by the decision-makers, i.e. the commission. MCDA interventions often involve a professional group which co-ordinates the investigation activities and controls the results. In this case, the District of Turin chose another approach to the problem and four Services of the District actively participated in the work (the EIA Service of the Environment Department, the Main Transportation Infrastructures Service of the Transportation Department, the Rural Development Service of the Agriculture Department and the Cartography Service of the Planning Department), but other Services were involved on some occasions. The other organisations that were involved were ARPA, the regional agency for environmental protection, with its EIA and Nature Conservation Department and three Territorial Services, the Department of Geology from the University of Turin and the Department of Energetics from the Politecnico di Torino (Technical University). The choice of this technical structure, initially mainly aimed at limiting costs, produced a time delay during the first months and several difficulties. In regular EIA procedures, technicians from these groups participate in some meetings at the Environmental Department of the District of Turin and voice their opinions. In the NRDS case, their role was defined during the work in relation to the complexity of each
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investigation (one or more criteria, the presence of structured data or the necessity of data acquisition, the presence of reference models in literature or a new investigation contexty). The main difficulties in the investigation phase were the consequences that no specific requirements were initially formulated and the innovative nature of the NRDS project was not discussed with the technical groups. The interaction with a participation process was completely new for almost all the Services and unusual for the Regional Agency and the University Departments. The commission required an explicit presentation of their investigative approach and the nature of any possible results. Each of the technical groups proposed a different methodological approach and in some cases the Commission agreed with these presentations, while in others the reaction was clearly negative. The communication between experts and representatives became difficult and sometimes even critical because it led to open conflict and loss of confidence or misunderstanding. The ‘MC language’ was used as a ‘communication space’ between the experts and representatives, a common language to express requirements and to explain investigation results. The concept of criterion, i.e. of the operational translation of data, indicators, judgements or preferences into a tool that allows the comparison of alternative actions in relation to a specific point of view or problem dimension, is not easy to explain in a few words and the experts and representatives only learned its real meaning when they worked together and oriented the investigation results towards an MC model. The facilitator group became the co-ordinator of all the technical works and the relationships between the two decisional and technical structures were organised in more formal terms for the routine activities. Investigation reports from the technicians were written, presented and analysed during the meetings. The period of time between two subsequent meetings (a fortnight on average) was used to analyse the documents in the different municipalities and by the citizen associations, and to prepare written observations, suggestions and criticism. The organisations that were involved in the technical support analysed all the material and elaborated written answers. Only in exceptional cases were meetings organised—when questions concerning technical work became too complicated or doubts too persistent to be resolved by post, fax, telephone or email. This process of collective learning (to elaborate and validate an enormous quantity of documentation and to develop a formal model) and the involvement of the technical structure in this participative process (which is not easy in the context of professional advice) produced important results, apart from a validated MC model: a
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clear reduction in time over the last months, when the convergence towards a final result became imperative and communication between the commission and the technical groups became easier and acquired an operational attitude, and a general improvement of the internal procedures of knowledge acquisition, filtering and communication in the District.
which was recently used in a case of water management (Wolfler-Calvo and Paruccini, 2001). The attention to the operational and ‘philosophical’ meaning of each MC method allows useful implementations and successful interventions of decision aiding to be made.
References Concluding remarks This paper describes a phase of the decision process initiated by the District of Turin to evaluate and rank some selected possible plant location sites. The use of a multi-criteria analysis method in this process (the NRDS project) is analysed in relation to this rather new form of participation, that resulted in a decisional but not institutional commission of more than 40 people, and the action of a facilitator group composed of experts in mediation, participative processes and MC decision aid. The long time that was necessary for the commission to reach a conclusion can be seen as the main weakness of this participative action. It is possible that external factors (in this case, mainly general and local council elections and the consequent intensive attention of the media during this period) have destabilised a process that lasted sixteen months. The investigation activities were long and time consuming in relation to the first model, but quicker and more effective for the second. All the technical groups had the opportunity of calibrating the correct detail level and their reports can now be used as a reference for similar activities. The relationship between the sector experts and commission was very difficult on different occasions. This element should be analysed carefully to improve the action and reduce risks of conflict and time dilation. There were different reasons for the hold up. The initial meetings that did not produce operational results were essential for the elaboration of a co-operative attitude and some ‘‘reflective pauses’’—which were proposed to debate and not to operate in the more critical period—allowed the explicit declaration of doubts and preoccupations and the passage to collective positions and decisions. The application of an ELECTRE III method was well suited to the situation. (In similar cases other outranking methods, see, for instance, PROMETHEE in Hokkanen and Salminen (1997a), produced important results.) ELECTRE and the SURMESURE illustration of its sensitivity analysis are powerful in multi-actor contexts: interesting comments are proposed in Rogers et al. (2000) and Soncini-Sessa et al. (2001). When interaction with the actors is essential, mainly because the uncertainties in the scientific inputs are fundamental to the policy options, NAIADE (Munda, 1995) is a different and interesting methodological approach,
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