The role of multi-criteria decision analysis in a transdisciplinary process: co-developing a flood forecasting system in western Africa

Abstract

Abstract. Climate change is projected to increase flood risks in western Africa. In the FANFAR project, a pre-operational flood early warning system (FEWS) for western Africa was co-designed in workshops with 50–60 stakeholders from 17 countries, adopting multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). We aimed at (i) designing a FEWS with western African stakeholders using MCDA and (ii) evaluating participatory MCDA as a transdisciplinary process. To achieve the first aim (i), we used MCDA methods for problem structuring and preference elicitation in workshops. Problem structuring included stakeholder analysis, creating 10 objectives to be achieved by the FANFAR FEWS and designing 11 possible FEWS configurations. Experts predicted FEWS configuration performance, which we integrated with stakeholder preferences. We tested MCDA results in sensitivity analyses. Three FEWSs showed good performance, despite uncertainty, and were robust across different preferences. For stakeholders it was most important that the FEWS produces accurate, clear, timely, and accessible flood risk information. To achieve the second aim (ii), we clustered common characteristics of collaborative governance frameworks from the sustainability science and transdisciplinary literature. Our framework emphasizes issues crucial to the earth systems sciences, such as uncertainty and integrating interdisciplinary knowledge. MCDA can address both well. Other strengths of MCDA are co-producing knowledge with stakeholders and providing a consistent methodology with unambiguous, shared results. Participatory MCDA including problem structuring can contribute to co-designing a project but does not achieve later phases of transdisciplinary processes well, such as co-disseminating and evaluating results. We encourage colleagues to use MCDA and the proposed framework for evaluating transdisciplinary hydrology research that engages with stakeholders and society.

Impact-based flood forecasting in the Greater Horn of Africa

“…The variability in the seasonal rainfalls is projected to increase, resulting in more frequent wetter and drier years and a higher risk of flood and drought events. Advances in weather prediction models have enabled skillful early warning systems for floods and other weather related hazards, also covering areas with very limited in situ measurements such as Africa (e.g., Lienert et al, 2022;Sheffield et al, 2014;Arsenault et al, 2020;Alfieri et al, 2013;Wu et al, 2019;Hales et al, 2022). The most common approach used in flood early warning systems is to force a hydrological model with numerical weather predictions (NWP) and detect upcoming floods when predicted flow peaks exceed warning thresholds derived from long-term statistics.…”

Using accounting dataset for agricultural sustainability assessment through a multi‐criteria approach: an Italian case study

“…One of the current research challenges in sustainability assessment is moving from multi‐disciplinarity to transdisciplinarity through interdisciplinarity (Sala et al., 2013). MCDA has been successfully applied in several contexts where a transdisciplinary approach is required (Wilkens and Schmuck, 2012; Boggia et al., 2018; Lienert et al., 2021). The complexity of sustainability assessment requires structured, transparent, and reliable tools, and MCDA can play an important role (Cinelli et al., 2014).…”