Risco e Decisão em Transportes

Objectives

• To develop familiarity and critical understanding of core concepts and support tools to facilitate decision making in the face of uncertainty/risk and different value systems resulting from multiple objectives and/or multiple stakeholders; • To develop an informed understanding of frameworks for decision problems structuring, preference modelling and choice, along with their characteristics, techniques, tools and applicability; • To develop the ability to relate concepts to practice and skills to model real-world problems in a structured way that supports rational decision making.

Syllabus

Paradigms in decision support involving uncertainty/risk, multiple objectives/attributes and multiple actors/stakeholders. Sources of uncertainty, data analysis and uncertainty modeling. Review of basic probability concepts, random variables and probability distributions, expectations and extreme values. Frameworks for risk analysis and management: risk assessment (identification, analysis and evaluation); risk treatment. Frameworks for decision support under uncertainty/risk: attitudes towards risk, preference modeling and utility theory; value of information and Bayes analysis; decision trees and influence diagrams. Multicriteria decision analysis: problem framing and structuring; local evaluation and partial preferences modeling; global evaluation with additive models; sensitivity/robustness analysis; non compensatory approaches to global evaluation and outranking methods.

Prerequisites

Basic knowledge of probability and statistics.

Cross Competence Component

This course, particularly in the home assignments component but also in approaches to the formulation and resolution of problems in classes and final examination, should contribute to the development of soft skills in “Critical and Innovative Thinking” (particularly with regard to structured and innovative approaches to problem solving, but also of strategic thinking (in problem formulation), critical thinking (namely in the analysis of results) and creativity), “Interpersonal Skills” (written and oral communication), “Intrapersonal Skills” (productivity and time management, stress management, pro-activity and initiative) and “Information and Media Literacy” (use of computer tools from the user's perspective, structuring and formatting of documents/reports. The assessment weight associated with these skills should be around 15%.