A review of multi-criteria decision-making methods for infrastructure management

Abstract

In infrastructure management, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) has emerged as a decision support tool to integrate various technical information and stakeholder values. Different MCDM techniques and tools have been developed. This paper presents a comprehensive review on the application of MCDM literature in the field of infrastructure management. Approximately 300 published papers were identified that report MCDM applications in the field of infrastructure management during 1980–2012. The reviewed papers are classified into application to the type of infrastructure (e.g. bridges and pipes), and prevalent decision or intervention (e.g. repair and rehabilitate). In addition, the papers were also classified according to MCDM methods used in the analysis. The paper provides taxonomy of those articles and identifies trends and new developments in MCDM methods. The results suggest that there is a significant growth in MCDM applications in infrastructure management applications of MCDM over the last decade. It has also been noted that many decision support tools based on multiple MCDM methods have been successfully used for infrastructure management.

Keywords::

• multi-criteria decision-making
• infrastructure
• asset management
• review
• decision analysis

Acknowledgement

The financial support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) under the Discovery Grant Program is acknowledged.

Notes

^1. Email: [email protected]

^2. Email: [email protected]