Abstract
Social cost benefit analysis often involves consideration of non-monetary outcomes. Multi-objective optimisation is an appropriate method for handling problems of this type, but many decision-makers have a strong mistrust of the approach. Reflections by the authors on real experiences supporting decision-makers suggest that the key barriers to using multi-objective methods for social cost benefit analysis include: (i) the inadequacy of current social systems models for measuring the end benefits provided by a candidate solution; (ii) the lack of appropriate societal preference estimates for resolving the inherent trade-offs between objectives; and (iii) the lack of practical examples, case studies and guidance which demonstrate that the approach works well.
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Purshouse, R.C., McAlister, J. (2013). Multi-objective Optimisation for Social Cost Benefit Analysis: An Allegory. In: Purshouse, R.C., Fleming, P.J., Fonseca, C.M., Greco, S., Shaw, J. (eds) Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization. EMO 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7811. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37140-0_54
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37140-0_54
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