Multicriteria approach for risk-based science prioritization

Abstract

Operating in a more constrained and more demanding system, DFO has been required to revise and revitalize their strategic plan that brings the requirement of a more transparent, participatory, and informed scientific decision making process through sound science. As for scientific organizations as DFO science, Analytic Hierarchy Process that provides a multiple criteria scoring result based on participants' knowledge and expertise is considered for the science prioritization supporting the decision making. For the specific situation in DFO, considering the organizational arrangement and the delivery of science function, different methods have been formulated and simulated to prove that AHP is an appropriate approach. Meanwhile, to perform the risk analysis for DFO science prioritization, expected utility theory has been chosen as the proper approach to take risk and uncertainty into account. Application software will be developed using these approaches specifically for DFO science risk-based prioritization process and an experiment carried out in Maritimes BIO workshop will be used to demonstrate the approaches and application system proposed in this thesis.