Improving Transnational Transport Corridors
In the OIC Member Countries: Concepts and Cases
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4.9. Multi Criteria Analysis
Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) is used for structuring decisions influenced by different criteria
that are not readily comparable on the same scale by giving the different criteria different
weights and values and then use an algorithm for arriving at a recommendation. Versions like
MAMCA (Multi-Actor, Multi Criteria Analysis) (Bergqvist et al., 2015) also consider that
different stakeholders values different things.
Where disparate and mixed quantitative and qualitative aspects of different projects require to
be compared in a systematic way, MCA proves to be a very useful method. It has been used by
many government as well as private institutions to rationalize choices and decisions on
various levels. For this assignment, an MCA is conducted to assess the performance of the six
case study corridors, using the seven framework areas as criteria.
Step 1: Criteria weighting
As the first step, the corridor experts that have participated in the online survey (se were
invited to assign weights (from 1 to 10) to the seven criteria based on their professional
opinion on the importance of each criterion to the corridor success. The total weighting must
add to exactly 10. In order to ensure the same level of understanding on what each criterion
refers to, all the experts were given a one page document contained the definition of each
criterion. Technical and operational factors for example, cover harmonizing technical
standards, interoperability, multimodality, and intermodality.
resents the weights given by 12 corridor experts (academics, policy makers, and
policy advisors). Each expert undertook this process individually without having any
knowledge of the scores given by the other experts.
It must be remarked from the outset that the MCA process benefits from a larger sample size
than 12 that have so far contributed. The desired statistical goal being convergence, such that
the addition of another respondent will make no obvious difference to the final ranking.
Having remarked on the limited sample size, the weighting part of the MCA process shows that
technical and operational factors have the highest weight as the most important factor for the
corridor success, followed by political and institutional factors. Here once again, it must be
said that if technically minded experts are the sole source of weighting data, then
unsurprisingly the technical weighting is higher.