Requirement analysis of an open access decision model for strategic planning of the Arctic Region
Purpose - This study attempts to do a requirement analysis for a decision model to benefit the business community and the government in making decisions. This research is the first part in a research program named DMA (Decision Model for the Arctic) arranged by CORDA (Center of Risk and Decision Analysis) which is a part of School of Science and Engineering at RU. Their program aims at providing answers on how the rapidly growing human activities in the North Atlantic will affect the economy by developing a decision model. To be able to answer these questions and project possible scenarios of the future it has to be clearly defined from the beginning what the decision is about and how to prioritize. The problems and opportunities must be identified and the possible options identified. This is the objective of this study. The aim is to define the parameters for the decision model to be built and to establish statistical attributes and interconnection. The goal was to structure a conceptual model to gain a better perspective of the decision problem regarding the Arctic activities. The purpose was to link together different disciplines and to present a guide of working practice for future work of the DMA project. Design/Methodology - To identify and to scope the decision problem this research followed the steps of the early requirement analysis and iterated between the steps as the research proceeded. This study is pragmatic and the three approaches that were applied in this study included: - Step 1-Expert Interviews: To define the economic parameters impacting the Arctic Region (i.e. Iceland) due to future activities in the area with qualitative data. Information was collected with techniques including interviews and document analysis. The results of the interviews were investigated with the aim of defining the most critical parameters to be included in the model. - Step 2-Internet based surveys: To validate the findings from previous step and to highlight the most critical economic parameters with quantitative data. Information was collected using a questionnaire available via the internet based survey. - Step 3-Conceptual model: To visually study the economic parameters, their relationship, impact and interactivity. Findings from step 1 and 2 were used as input to the formulation of the concept model. Findings - It can be concluded that the findings of this study (step 2) supported the definition of the economic parameters in (step 1) of this research since all of the economic parameters were assumed to have average to high impact on the Icelandic economy the next 20 years. Therefore the defined economic parameters in this study can be used as input to the DMA project carried out by CORDA. On the other hand, the sample size in step 2 is estimated to have been too small which lead to the expected value of the impact factor not to reflect the real impact of the economic parameters on the Icelandic economy with statistical significance. The data analysis supports this and indicates that there are uncertainties among stakeholders regarding the impact. Nevertheless, limited numbers of respondents was regarded as sufficient for the purpose of this thesis, since the main goal was to identify and define the economic parameters due to business activity in the Arctic. The conceptual model in this study visualizes the application that will be constructed for the strategic business planning of the Arctic Region. It clearly demonstrates the complications of the interrelation of the economic parameters and that they cannot be dealt with as isolated entities. The iterative work procedure presented in this study is highly robust and will benefit the future work of the CORDA program. The procedure can also be beneficial in structuring and assessing possible impacts of different alternatives for other decision problems.
Byggingarverkfræði, Framkvæmdastjórnun, Þarfagreiningar, Ákvarðanataka, Norðlægar slóðir, Tækni- og verkfræðideild, Meistaraprófsritgerðir, Civil engineering, Decision-making, Needs assessment, Polar regions, School of Science and Engineering
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