DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR SUBURBAN STATION REHABILITATION

Every public agency governing infrastructure has to plan effectively for rehabilitation of existing facilities within the constraints of the capital program. Numerous technical, social, political, financial, and management constraints govern the decision to rehabilitate a facility. However, without a systematic procedure for selecting facilities for rehabilitation, within the prevailing constraints, it is possible that the funds available for rehabilitation might be suboptimized. Therefore, a decision support system that assists the user in selecting facilities for rehabilitation while considering the technical, social, financial, and political and management constraints will be useful in the decision-making process. This paper compares the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the Swing Weight method used to prioritize functional criteria for suburban station rehabilitation. This paper also contains a brief discussion about the relevance of the Multi Attribute utility theory in developing a decision model for the problem at hand. The results of this paper provides the user with a decision support system that would prioritize the stations in order of their weights obtained by a systematic evaluation of various criteria and sub-criteria involved in the decision making process