Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Portobello Street, S1 3JD Sheffield, United Kingdom.
Department for Environmental Research and Innovation, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 5, avenue des Hauts-Fourneaux, L-4362, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
Water Res. 2021 Apr 15;194:116885. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2021.116885. Epub 2021 Feb 3.
Uncertainty in urban drainage modelling studies presents challenges to decision makers with limited investment resources attempting to achieve regulatory compliance for intermittent discharges from Combined Sewer Overflows. This paper presents the development of a new decision-making approach to address two key challenges encountered when attempting to manage sewer overflows, these are (i) the implications of different risk preferences of individuals for investment decisions; and (ii) how to utilize information on uncertainties in system performance predictions due to input or parameter uncertainty while comparing decision alternatives. The developed decision-making approach uses a multi-objective decision formulation to analyse the trade-off between investment and predicted system performance under uncertainty while accounting for risk preferences of the individual decision maker. The proposed uncertainty based decision-making approach is able to incorporate any threshold-based regulatory criteria for intermittent sewer overflows and is illustrated using a case study catchment in Luxembourg. The results from this case study highlight the significant impact of individuals' risk preferences on the level of investment recommended to comply with threshold-based regulatory criteria. It was demonstrated that differing levels of risk-averseness can result in a substantial increase in investment cost for solutions that are regulatory compliant. This paper demonstrates the need for water companies to rigorously define a corporate risk preference strategy to ensure consistent investment decisions across their operations; otherwise, individual preferences may cause significant over-investment to meet the same regulatory goals.
城市排水模型研究中的不确定性给决策者带来了挑战，他们有限的投资资源试图实现间歇性合流污水溢流的法规合规性。本文提出了一种新的决策方法，以解决在试图管理污水溢流时遇到的两个关键挑战，即：(i) 个人不同风险偏好对投资决策的影响；以及 (ii) 在比较决策方案时，如何利用由于输入或参数不确定性而导致的系统性能预测中的不确定性信息。所开发的决策方法使用多目标决策制定来分析不确定性下投资和预测系统性能之间的权衡，同时考虑个体决策者的风险偏好。所提出的基于不确定性的决策方法能够将任何基于阈值的间歇性污水溢流法规标准纳入其中，并通过卢森堡的一个案例研究流域进行说明。该案例研究的结果强调了个人风险偏好对建议投资水平的显著影响，以符合基于阈值的法规标准。结果表明，不同程度的风险厌恶可能会导致符合法规的解决方案的投资成本大幅增加。本文证明了水务公司需要严格定义企业风险偏好策略，以确保在其运营中做出一致的投资决策；否则，个别偏好可能会导致过度投资，以达到相同的监管目标。
