APPLICATION OF ROBUSTNESS ANALYSIS TO TRANSPORTATION PROJECT SELECTION

The decision making process associated with a highway project can become progressively complicated depending on the degree of uncertainty associated with its outcome. One way out of this dilemma is to take the risk of adopting an alternative for implementation, with the hope that it will lead to the desired outcome. However, in the case of public projects, decision makers do not have the luxury of expending tax payers dollars, and then discovering later that they chose the wrong one. To mitigate this problem, engineers can resort to robustness analysis. Robustness analysis is a technique which emphasizes the need, under conditions of uncertainty, to take early decisions in a time-phased sequence in such a way as to preserve many future options which currently seem attractive. This paper briefly describes the essence of the robustness analysis, and then applies the principles of this technique to a couple of transportation projects. It illustrates how this method of analysis can be used for working out a variety of options open to decision maker, in the face of uncertainties. The results of this exercise suggest that this method provides flexibility to long-range planning, enabling transportation planners to minimize the uncertainty with such projects.