Prioritizing Infrastructure Investments in Afghanistan with Multiagency Stakeholders and Deep Uncertainty of Emergent Conditions
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 18, Issue 2
Abstract
The Afghanistan National Development Strategy identified billions of dollars of needs for transportation, water, energy, telecommunications, and other necessary infrastructure development for the rebuilding of Afghanistan. With economic sustainability as a primary aim, the coordination and prioritization of investments has been a challenge in part because of Afghanistan’s volatile security situation along with the intricacies of the negotiating and coordinating efforts of numerous stakeholders. An understanding of the contributions of infrastructure systems and associated projects to the national development strategy is needed. This paper formulates a scenario-informed multicriteria approach to prioritize major project investments for infrastructure development subject to deep, nonprobabilistic uncertainties. The methods are inclusive of stakeholder values and accounts for deep uncertainties in governance, security, economy, environment, workforce, and other topics. The methods are applied in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province to assist in the selection among twenty-seven candidate infrastructure projects that are vulnerable to potential refugee immigration among other emergent conditions. The paper describes the relationships of selected projects to strategic goals while facilitating collaboration among government and nongovernment investors, donors, technologists, and other stakeholders.
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Acknowledgments
The effort described in this paper has been supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and by the Business Transformation Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. The authors are grateful for the comments of the participants of a workshop on the Afghanistan Sustainable Infrastructure Plan that was convened early in the effort at the University Club, Washington, D.C. Permission was granted by the US Army Chief of Engineers to publish this information. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the individual authors and not those of the US Department of State, US Army or other sponsor agencies.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 18 • Issue 2 • June 2012
Pages: 155 - 166
Copyright
© 2012. American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 6, 2011
Accepted: Sep 8, 2011
Published online: Sep 10, 2011
Published in print: Jun 1, 2012
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