Technical Policy Briefing Notes - 7
Analytic Hierarchy Process
The Application to Adaptation
Policy Briefs
Analytic Hierarchy Process
The Application to Adaptation
AHP has been used in a wide variety of fields
including engineering, business strategic management, education and
quality assessment. The approach has high relevance for the analysis of
climate adaptation related decisions, given it is useful where a range
of stakeholders are dealing with issues that have a high degree of
complexity, that involve uncertainty and risk, and include
subjectivity, i.e. human perceptions and judgments. It is also
potentially useful when the outcomes have possible long-term
consequences (Bhushan, 2004).
The tool has a particular relevance where important elements of the decision are difficult to quantify or compare, or where different expertise, goals, and world-views are a barrier to consensus-building and communication.
In the context of climate adaptation, the method can be used to compare a set of adaptation options against a set of defined criteria using participants’ experience and judgment about the issues of concern. It allows the comparison of diverse elements that are often difficult to measure in a structured and systematic way using a scale. This makes it particularly relevant for sectors or key criteria where quantification is challenging.
The first applications of the approach to climate change were in the context of the global negotiations on climate change (Ramanathan, 1998) and later in mitigation policy instruments (Konidari and Mavrakis, 2007). AHP is now increasingly being applied in the area of climate change adaptation. It was applied using a participatory approach for the integration of indigenous knowledge within adaptation strategies in the Tabasco Plains of Mexico (Ponce-Hernandez and Patel, forthcoming), in the evaluation of adaptation options for human settlements in South East Queensland (Choy et al., 2012), in the integration of GIS modelling to look at crop impacts in Australia (Sposito, 2006) and to explore the impacts of storm surge and sea level rise in Canada and Caribbean (Lane and Watson, 2010). Yin et al (2008) applied AHP to evaluate adaptation options for the water sector in the Heihe River Basin in north-western China, resulting in a higher preference for institutional options for managing water demand (imposing constraints on large consumers, water conservation initiatives through water user associations, and transferrable water allocation permits), rather than ‘hard’ engineering options for increasing water supply.
The AHP method can evaluate adaptation options against a range of different criteria in the context of an overarching climate adaptation goal by comparing them to one another, two at a time (pairwise comparison). These comparisons are made using a scale that represents how much more one element is preferential to another given the criteria and options chosen are as mutually exclusive as possible.
The tool has a particular relevance where important elements of the decision are difficult to quantify or compare, or where different expertise, goals, and world-views are a barrier to consensus-building and communication.
In the context of climate adaptation, the method can be used to compare a set of adaptation options against a set of defined criteria using participants’ experience and judgment about the issues of concern. It allows the comparison of diverse elements that are often difficult to measure in a structured and systematic way using a scale. This makes it particularly relevant for sectors or key criteria where quantification is challenging.
The first applications of the approach to climate change were in the context of the global negotiations on climate change (Ramanathan, 1998) and later in mitigation policy instruments (Konidari and Mavrakis, 2007). AHP is now increasingly being applied in the area of climate change adaptation. It was applied using a participatory approach for the integration of indigenous knowledge within adaptation strategies in the Tabasco Plains of Mexico (Ponce-Hernandez and Patel, forthcoming), in the evaluation of adaptation options for human settlements in South East Queensland (Choy et al., 2012), in the integration of GIS modelling to look at crop impacts in Australia (Sposito, 2006) and to explore the impacts of storm surge and sea level rise in Canada and Caribbean (Lane and Watson, 2010). Yin et al (2008) applied AHP to evaluate adaptation options for the water sector in the Heihe River Basin in north-western China, resulting in a higher preference for institutional options for managing water demand (imposing constraints on large consumers, water conservation initiatives through water user associations, and transferrable water allocation permits), rather than ‘hard’ engineering options for increasing water supply.
The AHP method can evaluate adaptation options against a range of different criteria in the context of an overarching climate adaptation goal by comparing them to one another, two at a time (pairwise comparison). These comparisons are made using a scale that represents how much more one element is preferential to another given the criteria and options chosen are as mutually exclusive as possible.
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