A Knowledge-based Model for the Stakeholders’ Risk Assessment in Large Scale Transport Infrastructure Projects

The identification of risks in the planning phase of a project and the arrangement of impact values has become a fundamental basis of the successful completion of today’s various construction projects. Despite robust and well-planned projects, unexpected problems will likely emerge in any stage of the project if possible risks are not identified and assessed beforehand. Therefore, this process has become a requisite in increasing the success as well as minimizing the problems of a project. Large-scale transport infrastructure projects (LSTIPs) are developed structures that emerged from the essential necessity of fast-paced and convenient transportation in gradually growing populations. LSTIPs, technologically equipped projects, meet the essential needs of the recent era but also bring about numerous risks such as financial, technical, managerial, political, economical, natural or legal. Hence, being exposed to such risks in the planning and construction stage of LSTIPs, could lead to negative consequences in the fate of the project. Regarding the risks that could be confronted in European and Middle Eastern LSTIPs, this study aims to investigate and determine the possible risks in order of priority for each region by means of an Analytical Network Process (ANP) method. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to determine the risks that were thereafter synthesized in collaboration with pertinent experts. The priority orders were obtained separately for Europe and the Middle East, and comparisons were made between these regions. The results in the study highlight that Europe and the Middle East share both common and distinctive risk factors in the orders of priority. “The financial strength of the client” listed in the financial category for Europe and the Middle East received a priority value of 13.37% and 11.54%, respectively, clearly ranked as the foremost common risk factor for the two regions. However, salient differences were noted in the second leading risk categories for Europe and the Middle East, namely, the findings revealed that the “change in scope of work” risk factor under the construction category has a priority value of 5.48% for Europe and the “water pollution” risk factor under the natural and environmental category has a priority value of 4.55% for the Middle East. To further support the priority orders achieved in this study, two different case studies were conducted. This study also aims to develop a conceptual framework which provides a pathway for the planning phase and to offer risk lists and their priority orders that reinforce the construction phase. This study also incorporates a developed knowledge-based tool that is an aid to rapid and efficient risk identification and decision making in the planning phase of LSTIPs operated by firms in Europe and the Middle East. This knowledge-based tool was created by using the data attained from the firms as well as the risk factors’ priority orders obtained from the ANP model to deploy the logical if-then rules in order to convert them to Exsys corvid shell. In addition to highly contributing to the LSTIPs in Europe and the Middle East, it is believed that the priority orders and the LSTIPs risk identification and decision supporting (RiDECS) tool achieved in this study could be used as a guideline for identifying and sequencing risks in the planning stages of similar projects conducted in various countries. Moreover, future related studies could be juxtaposed with the results of this study to analyze the alterations of priority orders that will have occurred in the course of time. Keywords: large-scale; transport; infrastructure projects; ANP; Europe; Middle East; knowledge-based; RiDECS; Tool