| Popis: |
Supporting the process of transport infrastructure decision-making: an instrument to identify the combinations of conditions under which project objectives can be achieved Decision making is part of our everyday life, from simple things such as deciding what clothes to wear till more complex issues as deciding about very expensive transport infrastructure (TI) project investments. For simple decisions, we can use our intuition but for the complex decisions humans need decision support tools that will help them make a decision as rational as possible. The present doctoral thesis comes to support the TI projects’ decision making process throughout the different phases of the TI projects’ lifecycle, from the early stages of planning and evaluation till the construction and operation phase, by identifying the combinations of factors that affected the performance of past TI projects. The performance of projects is defined based on four key project objectives in the present thesis, the cost, time, traffic and revenues. Thus, a TI project is considered successful, if it is delivered on the cost and time that have been initially estimated (or with less cost and in less time) and with the traffic and revenues initially forecast (or with higher traffic and revenues). A new decision support tool was developed, called ’Project objectives’ achievement compass’’ (POAC). POAC is simple to be used and understood and does not only inform its users about the likelihood that a TI project will be delivered over budget, delayed and with traffic and revenues less than they have been initially forecast but it also shows the reasons behind this failure, allowing them to try to improve the factors that have been found to be the reason of failure. The readers of the thesis, aside to getting themselves familiar with the new decision support tool, will be shown the exact steps they should follow so as to apply it. They will be also introduced to an overall background knowledge relevant to the thesis’ topic. They will also acquire knowledge for the overall sample of cases used in the analysis and for the reasons that caused cost and time overruns, traffic and revenue underruns in each of them. In addition, the readers will be able to gain knowledge about a new indicator that has been developed in this thesis, so as to be used as one of the independent variables in the analysis and also about the fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of different sub-samples of the overall sample of the 51 TI European projects. Thus, not only the readers will see how fsQCA method works and how its results are interpreted but they will also take overall conclusions out of the fsQCA results, showing the combinations of conditions (i.e. factors) under which project objectives can be achieved. The output of the present thesis can be useful for analysts, decision makers, financiers and in general for all the stakeholders that are involved in TI planning, delivery and operation and academic scholars working with similar scientific topics. |
