On the use of multi-criteria analysis in environmental impact assessment in The Netherlands

JOURNAL OF MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS

J. Multi-Crit. Decis. Anal. 10: 101–109 (2001)

On the Use of Multi-Criteria Analysis in Environmental ImpactAssessment in The Netherlands

RON JANSSEN*Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, Netherlands

ABSTRACT

Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is a popular tool in Dutch environmental impact assessment (EIA). This paperprovides an overview of the type and complexity of decision problems supported, and the MCA approach selectedto analyse these problems. Furthermore, the role of MCA in the decision process is analysed, and a special casewhere the MCA results were challenged in court is presented. The paper concludes with some lessons learned fromthe use of MCA in the Netherlands Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

KEY WORDS: environmental impact assessment; multi-criteria analysis; the Netherlands

DOI: 10.1002/mcda.293

1. INTRODUCTION

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a well-established institution in the Netherlands. All ac-tivities in the private and public sector, which areexpected to cause serious environmental impacts,are required to produce an EIA. As a result,production of EIAs by environmental consultantsis a flourishing industry. Comparison of alterna-tives is an important element of the procedure: inthe scoping phase, a small number of alternativesis selected for further study from many potentialalternatives, and in the final evaluation, thesealternatives are evaluated in more detail. In manyEIAs, multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is used tosupport one or both steps. Opponents to the useof MCA state that the method is prone to manip-ulation, is very technocratic, and provides a falsesense of accuracy. Proponents claim that MCAprovides a systematic, transparent approach thatincreases objectivity and generates results that canbe reproduced (Bonte et al., 1997, 1998). Cost–benefit analysis is not obligatory, and also notcommonly used in Dutch EIA.

Experimental applications of MCA in the early1980s included management problems, such as thefresh water supply for the Province of South

Holland (IODZH, 1983). These early applicationswere very complex, not always consistent, andwere used mainly on the strategic level. As a resultof EIA legislation, a shift can be observed in theuse of MCA in recent years from comparison ofvery different alternatives at the strategic level inthe experimental applications to comparison ofrelatively similar alternatives at the project level.In the last 5–10 years, further quantification ofenvironmental management, an increase in thesize and complexity of projects, and increasedpublic participation in the decision-making pro-cess has created the need to communicate largeamounts of information in a straightforward andtransparent way. This has stimulated a dramaticincrease in the use of MCA. The use of MCA hasmade it possible to include a long list of impacts,although most of them with very small weights.This aspect of MCA suits the consensus-seekingapproach in Dutch environmental decision-mak-ing, where public participation is institutionalizedand all relevant parties must be heard.

In this paper, examples of the use of MCA inDutch EIA are presented (Section 2). This listprovides an overview of the type and size of thesedecision problems and the MCA method used.Practical issues in applying MCA are highlighted.Section 3 deals with the role of MCA in thedecision process. In one example, the results ofMCA were challenged in court. This special caseis presented in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 pre-sents lessons learned in the Netherlands.

* Correspondence to: Institute for Environmental Stud-ies, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1115, 1081 HVAmsterdam, Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Recei�ed 29 December 1999

Accepted 22 April 2001

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2. EXAMPLES OF MCA IN DUTCH EIA

Around 60 EIAs are completed each year. Theseassessments are for relatively large projects, be-cause small projects usually do not have a legalrequirement for an EIA (MER, 1994). MCA isincluded in some form in roughly ten EIAs peryear. A representative set of examples of MCA inDutch EIA is presented in Table I. Part of thistable results from a survey commissioned by the

Dutch Commission on EIA (Heidemij advies,1997). The list of activities is dominated by largeinfrastructure projects, such as highways and rail-ways. Many of the projects involve the Ministryof Transport and Waterways. This ministry hasbeen a promoter of MCA for a long time, and hasexperienced provincial directorates in charge ofMCA studies. The list includes a number of rela-tively technical studies with a low political profile,such as storage facilities (6, 9) and a fresh water

Table I. Examples of the use of MCA in Dutch EIA

Year Problem size MCA methodActivities

(1) Provincial sludge treatment plan: Flevoland 1992 16 criteria; 29 alternatives Concordance method6 categories; 23 criteria; 7(2) Provincial waste processing plan: Flevoland Weighted summation1992alternatives

(3) Wreck processing installations: Oosterhout 1992 Aggregation of ordinal scores14 criteria; 5 alternatives12 groups; 50 criteria; 9 al-1993 Graphical presentation(4) Road, train and water transport in the Amster-ternativesdam–Utrecht transport corridor

1993 7 categories; 52 criteria; 61(5) Siting a solid waste dump in the Province of EvamixUtrecht alternatives

(6) Siting and design of a storage facility for polluted Evamix1994 13 categories; 35 criteria; 5sediments in the Hollandsch Diep alternatives

(7) Siting new residential areas in Zaanstad 1994 Weighted summation6 categories; 20 criteria; 10alternatives

Weighted summation5 categories; 32 criteria; 7(8) Design of a fresh water reservoir in the Biesbosch 1994alternatives

1995 Evamix6 categories; 30 criteria; 15(9) Siting and design of a storage facility for pollutedsediments: Ketelmeer alternatives

1995 9 categories; 75 criteria; 13(10) Highway 73, Venlo—Sint Joost Weighted summationalternatives6 categories; 21 criteria; 4(11) International business park: Friesland Weighted summation1995alternatives4 categories; 43 criteria; 4 Weighted summation1995(12) Siting and design of the helicopter training site:alternativesDe Haar

Weighted summation1995 7 categories; 35 criteria; 6(13) Cleaning polluted sediments in the provinces ofGroningen, Friesland and Drenthe alternatives

(14) The Betuwe freight railway 5 categories; 40 criteria; 20 Weighted summation1996alternatives

1997 5 categories; 56 criteria; 10(15) Highway 2, Vianen—Den Bosch Weighted summationalternatives

Weighted summation(16) Highway 15 Varsseveld-Enschede 10 categories; 76 criteria;199816 alternatives13 categories; 93 criteria;(17) North-east link of the Betuwe freight railway 1999 Weighted summation36 alternatives5 categories; 24 criteria; 5(18) Provincial road N219 Zevenhuizen bypass 1999 Evamixalternatives

Weighted summation10 categories; 100 criteria;1999(19) River development Zandmaas3 alternatives

(20) Hanze rail link: Lelystad-Zwolle 2000 13 categories; 92 criteria; 7 Inefficient alternative andweighted summationalternativesWeighted summation(21) Reconstruction ring road: Amsterdam (A10 west) 5 categories; 28 criteria; 42000

alternatives

Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Multi-Crit. Decis. Anal. 10: 101–109 (2001)

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT IN THE NETHERLANDS 103

reservoir (8). However, the list also includes activ-ities with a very high political profile, such as theBetuwe freight railway (14), Highway 73 (10) anddevelopment of the Zandmaas river (20). A com-mon element within all projects is the largeamount of information presented to decision-makers and other participants.

Almost all EIAs are conducted at the projectlevel and initiated by the party that wants toundertake an activity. As a result, the alternativesto be compared are relatively similar. For exam-ple, alternative rail routes were compared in theBetuwe project (14), rather than, say, rail andwater transport. This makes comparison easierand limits the extent to which different types ofimpacts need to be traded off. In these applica-tions, MCA is used to bring forward the differ-ences among alternatives. Unfortunately, MCA isoften not used in the ‘big choice’ at the morestrategic level. Recent experiments with the use ofEIA at the strategic level may eventually changethis situation. Most EIAs are produced by envi-ronmental consultants. However, if the initiatorof the activity is a governmental organization, theanalysis is sometimes performed within that orga-nization, or by an ad hoc project group1.

Owing to detailed legal requirements, EIA re-ports are usually extensive. Reports of 300 pageswith five to ten background documents is the rulerather then the exception. An extreme case is theBetuwe freight line (14) with over 1450 pages oftext and about 250 maps. These reports are sum-marized in large evaluation tables. Table I showsthat the evaluation tables included between 14and 100 criteria and between 5 and 61 alterna-tives. The size of these tables makes them unsuit-able for direct evaluation (cf. Miller, 1956). Theneed to communicate the EIA results summarizedin the evaluation tables to decision-makers andother participants requires their structuring andaggregation. In some cases, this is done using anexecutive summary, in other cases, this is doneusing graphics. In the examples included in TableI, MCA is used.

2.1. AlternativesGenerating a complete set of relevant alternativesproves to be a complex task. This set includes thealternatives relevant to the initiator of the activity,and usually a ‘do nothing’ alternative (zero) andan alternative with only small adjustments to thiscurrent situation (zero plus). By law, the environ-

mentally most friendly alternative (EMFA), thealternative with the smallest impact on the envi-ronment within reasonable constraints, must alsobe included. Political reasons, bad practice or thepressures of time may lead to an incomplete set.This can cause substantial delay because externalpressure may force the decision-maker to includeadditional alternatives at a later stage of the pro-cess; this happened in the Hollandsch Diep (6)and the Betuwe freight line (14) examples.

Many alternatives are constructed from build-ing blocks or elements. The total route for ahighway can be divided into sections, and alterna-tives are defined for each section. The overallalternative is some combination of these differentalternatives per section. The same procedure isfollowed for dike improvement projects. To makethe problem manageable, the alternatives may beranked per section and the best overall alternativefound by combining the best-ranked alternativesof each section. This approach may result insub-optimal solutions if dependencies betweensections exist: For example, the decision to con-struct or not construct a bicycle path on the diketop should be the same for all sections.

Another procedure that can easily result insub-optimal solutions is to separate different as-pects of an alternative, for example, location anddesign. The best location is selected, and in asecond round, the best design is selected. How-ever, this is permissible only if both aspects areindependent which, unfortunately, is often not thecase. For example, the visual damage to a loca-tion cannot be estimated if the dimensions of afacility are not known.

If the decision-maker is only interested in thebest alternative, excluding inefficient alternativescan be worthwhile. In the Hanze rail link study(20) the objective was to select a limited numberof alternatives for further design (scoping) ratherthan to provide a full ranking. This was achievedby systematically eliminating inefficient alterna-tives using different sections and combination ofsections of the total rail link (NS Railinfrabeheer,1998).

2.2. Criteria, scores and weightsThe number of criteria included in the evaluationis large in all examples from Table I. This followsfrom the practice of anticipating or reacting torequests from all interested parties. The objectivesof these parties are often implicit, and no attempt


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may be made to construct a systematic evaluationframework. The list of criteria becomes simply anaddition of requests from all stakeholders, ratherthan the result of a systematic value tree. Thispractice produces evaluation tables that includemany criteria with only a minor influence on thefinal ranking and that are far too large to supporta direct comparison of the alternatives. A surveyof evaluation tables shows that the absence of aconsistent evaluation framework leads to double-counting, confusion between means and ends inthe criteria, dependencies among criteria, missingcriteria, and inconsistencies in spatial and tempo-ral scales (Eck, 1999).

Almost all examples listed in Table I include amixture of quantitative and qualitative scores.Qualitative scores are usually scores measured ona plus and minus (− − −/+ + + ) scale. Inmany cases, this scale is used as a representationof an underlying classification of quantitativescores. The plusses and minuses are linked todifferent ranges in this classification. This is not areal ordinal scale, as the number of plusses orminuses reflects the size of the impact, and notjust the order. Real ordinal scores are not foundin any of the studies. All studies add a simplelegend to the plusses and minuses describing, forexample, + + + as a very large positive effect, 0as no effect and − − − as a very large negativeeffect. Most studies link these size classes to quan-titative ranges or verbal descriptions, but somestudies provide no further specification. The(− − −/+ + + ) scale is often used too looselyas for the Zandmaas (19) example, where criteriaare scored on (− − −/0), (− −/0), (0/+ + ),(0/+ + + ) and (− − −/+ + + ) scales. Thiscan easily lead to a biased perception of theevaluation table, because readers of the table mayexpect that + + + always represents the bestpossible score and, therefore, undervalue a scoreof + + on a 0/+ + scale.

Geographical information systems (GIS) playan increasingly important role in EIA. Geo-refer-enced impacts of the alternatives can be stored,analysed and aggregated within a GIS. The resultscan be used as input to an MCA (Herwijnen,1999). In some cases, the use of GIS results inquantification of qualitative criteria, such as vi-sual quality of the landscape. In these cases,counting point and line elements and calculatingarea sizes in the landscape replace the subjective,but holistic assessment of landscape architects.

Criteria are grouped into categories or ‘themes’in almost all studies. These categories help thereader to get a better overview of the impacts.Criteria within a category relate to a commonelement, for example, a category for impacts onwater quality or a category for impacts on mobil-ity. These categories are usually implicitly linkedto policy objectives. The grouping is used toperform a two-step evaluation: first a ranking foreach category, and second, a final ranking. Inmost cases, weights within a category are at-tributed by experts on the basis of generally avail-able scientific knowledge, and weights betweencategories by politicians based on policy priori-ties. Expert weights are set according to theoreti-cal knowledge on the relative importance ofimpacts, such as the relative importance of differ-ent types of plants, or the relative importance ofdifferent pollutants in the soil. These weights re-flect the opinion of one or more experts, andusually do not create much controversy. Weightsbetween categories are political weights and re-flect the trade-off between policy objectives and/or stakeholders. Examples are the trade-offbetween safety and nuisance, or between transportand environment. It could be argued that, if acategory corresponds to an objective of a well-defined interest group, the weights within a cate-gory should reflect the subjective preferences ofthat group. This was not found in the examples.

The political decision-making follows publica-tion of the EIA. The EIA report usually does notpresent one final ranking based on one set ofpolitical weights, but rankings based on severalperspectives corresponding to the different weightsets of the various stakeholders. For example,political weights can be specified for economic,social or environmental perspectives, and rank-ings presented for each of these. Political weight-ing easily creates debate. The use of perspectivesis used to demonstrate the relation between prior-ities and ranking. There is usually less discussionabout the underlying scientific and technicalweights, because most people have the idea thatthis is purely a question of fact. However, thisdistinction between scientific and political weightsis gradual rather than absolute. An expert whobalances the loss of one badger den (ecology)against the retention of one hectare of fenmeadow (ecology again), is making the same typeof subjective comparison as a politician who bal-ances one road death (road safety) against the loss



of one hectare of industrial land (economy). Ifpolitical trade-offs are mixed with expert weights,as is often the case, debate on expert weights getsmixed with the debate on political weights (e.g.Hollandsch Diep (6), Betuwe Rail Link (14) andBiesbosch (8)).

2.3. MCA methodsWeighted summation is used ten times and is,therefore, clearly the most popular MCA methodof the examples listed in Table I. This approach isrelatively simple: a linear function is used to stan-dardize the quantitative scores and the overallscore is calculated as the weighted average of thestandardized scores (Janssen, 1992). Criteria mea-sured on a − − −/+ + + scale are, most ofthe time, also standardized using a linear func-tion. Because weighted summation is methodolog-ically sound, easy to explain and transparent, thismethod is recommended in the MCA manualpublished by the Dutch Commission for EIA(Bonte et al., 1997). The Evamix method, whichwas developed in the Netherlands, is also popular,because many projects include a mixture of quan-titative and qualitative scores (Voogd, 1983). Thepopularity of the Evamix method is surprising, asthe method is complex, and because it is verydifficult to relate input to output. None of theelectre methods (Vincke, 1992), the analyticalhierarchy process (AHP) (Saaty, 1980), and theregime method (Nijkamp et al., 1990) are used inthe examples. According to Heidemij advies(1997), about half of the studies used the MCAsoftware package DEFINITE (Janssen and Her-wijnen, 1994; Janssen et al., 2000). The choice ofmethod is hardly an issue for the MCA usersrepresented in this list, despite the intensive de-bate in the multi-criteria decision-making(MCDM) community on the best method. A clearexplanation of the advantages and disadvantagesof the different methods was found in one studyonly. Only six studies provided reasons for theirchoice of method, while two studies completelyfailed to mention which method was used. Sensi-tivity of the rankings to uncertainties in the effectscores, or to changes in MCA and standardizationmethod used, is performed in only a limited num-ber of cases. Results of sensitivity analysis may befound, at best, in a background report. Some-times, as, for example, in the Betuwe freight linestudy (14), sensitivity analyses were deliberatelynot conducted to limit discussion on the reliabilityof the MCA results.

3. ROLE OF MCA

3.1. The decision processAn EIA is a formal procedure embedded in deci-sion processes involving substantial environmen-tal impacts. MCA can be part of the EIA, and soplays a role in the decision process. Mintzberg etal. (1976) developed a general model of decisionprocesses. They found that decision processes canbe divided into seven types, according to the pathtaken through the model. (1) Simple impasse deci-sion processes are the simplest of these seventypes. These decision processes involve no devel-opment activity. (2) Political design decision pro-cesses are more complicated, as they involveextensive design activities, and meet frequent anddifficult interruptions. Design activities are mostlypolitical, and initiated to change the power struc-ture within the decision process. (3) In basicsearch decision processes, the best available ready-made solution is selected in one or more searchcycles. (4) In modified search decision processes,search cycles are followed by limited design activ-ity. (5) Basic design is the most common type ofdecision process in Dutch EIA. This type of deci-sion process involves extensive design activity,which typically leads to complex, custom-madesolutions. Interrupts are uncommon. (6) Inblocked design decision processes, final authoriza-tion and implementation is blocked through exter-nal interrupts. (7) Dynamic design decisionprocesses are the most complex of the decisionprocesses. These processes involve complex searchand design cycles and encounter multiple inter-ruptions. All decision problems listed in Table Ican be described as ‘basic design decision process’.

In the simplest case, the EIA process includesthree design rounds and three feedback cycles(Figure 1). In practice, interruptions and manymore loops are found. Recognition and diagnosisresult in a small document from the initiator ofthe activity describing why the activity is consid-ered necessary. This is the start of the EIA. Thefirst design round is used for scoping. All possiblealternatives are considered, and a few are selectedfor further design. Because the alternatives areoften combinations of elements (for example, tenpotential locations and five potential designs, orfive alternatives for five sections of a highway),the number of alternatives in this first round canbe very large. MCA plays a role in this scopinground, but not as often as might be expected. The


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EIA procedure prescribes that the most environ-mentally friendly alternative must be included inthe set of alternatives selected for further design.Because defining the alternative may includetrade-offs among environmental impacts, MCAwas used in the Flevoland (1) and Biesbosch (8)examples (see Table I) to design this alternative.

A second design round starts after the firstfeedback cycle. In this round, a small number ofalternatives is designed in detail, and a detailedrepresentation of the environmental impacts ofthese alternatives is provided. For analysis/evalua-tion, information is usually summarized in anevaluation table; aggregation may be supportedby MCA. The EIA process is finished once theCommission on EIA approves the quality of thedocument. The decision process, however, is farfrom finished. The results of the evaluation entersbargaining, e�aluation choice for the second time.The decision process is ended and implementationcan begin when an alternative is selected andauthorized by the competent authority. However,a new option interrupt often occurs at this pointin the process. Examples are the introduction ofan underground alternative for the Betuwe freightline, and the introduction of a tunnel for part ofHighway 73. New option interruptions can sendthe process back to design, to elaborate the newoption, or back to e�aluation/choice to select or

reject the new option immediately. It is also com-mon, at this stage, that no agreement can bereached on the preferred alternative. This oftenresults in a feedback to design and the construc-tion of a compromise alternative using elementsfrom existing alternatives. Design of this newalternative is usually not followed by an assess-ment of the impacts of this compromise alterna-tive. A new MCA to evaluate the new alternativerelative to the old alternatives is never conducted.At this stage, the political need to reach consensusdominates all other considerations.

3.2. Decision-makersThe objective of an EIA is to inform all stake-holders of the environmental impact of an activ-ity. Stakeholders include the initiator of anactivity, people involved in the public participa-tion rounds, the authority that grants the environ-mental license (usually, the province) and, in somecases, the court, if the decision is challenged. Theinitiator is responsible for the production of theEIA. Public hearings are organized to inform allstakeholders, and to invite their suggestions. Thequality of the EIA, and, therefore, of the MCAalso, is controlled by the Commission on EIA.Stakeholders have different expertise and differentinterests. To play its role in the process, the MCAmust be well-documented, easy to repeat, and as

Figure 1. A basic design decision process.



objective and transparent as possible. Well-conducted and presented MCAs play an impor-tant role in the debate around the activity, andare usually appreciated by all participants. A well-structured evaluation table is a central factor forsuccess. According to Mooren (1996), a certainmistrust towards MCA can be observed at thestart of an EIA procedure. Decision-makers fear atechnocratic instrument that can be manipulatedeasily, yet are sometimes afraid of results that aretoo precise and leave too little space for politicalmanoeuvring. This attitude changes during theprocess, because the decision-maker comes to ap-preciate that MCA provides a structured ap-proach, and provides an efficient means ofcommunication. By the end of the process, theconfidence in the results is often too high. Forexample, in the Highway 73 case (10) (see TableI), decision-makers used small differences in theweighted sum scores of the alternatives to arguetheir case in the political debate (Mooren, 1996).

4. MCA IN COURT: THE HOLLANDSCHDIEP CASE

The EIA process usually ends with a decision toimplement one of the alternatives. An environ-mental license granted by the competent authorityusually formalizes this decision. The granting ofthe license may be challenged in court. The EIAusually plays an important role in these courtcases. It is rare that the judge goes into the detailsof the MCA and that the use of MCA itself is thesubject of the court case. However, this happenedin the case of the storage facility for pollutedsediments in Hollandsch Diep. The need for stor-age in Hollandsch Diep stems from the presenceof contaminated sediments in the area. Accordingto national policy, these sediments must bedredged and stored. The proposed storage facilityis a 50 m deep pit within a ring-dike, with acapacity of 30 million m3 and a dike height of 3.5m. The ring-dike can be removed once the pit isfilled and consolidated.

An EIA procedure was initiated to find a loca-tion for this facility. Combining locations, storagecapacities and management measures resulted in atotal of 26 alternatives linked to three locations.The alternatives were compared using 35 criteriagrouped into 13 evaluation categories. Expert

weights were determined to aggregate criteriawithin each category. Weight sets linked to differ-ent perspectives were used to generate overallrankings linked to these perspectives. The Evamixmethod was used to generate the rankings, be-cause parts of the criterion scores were measuredon a qualitative scale (Nijkamp et al., 1990). Theresults of the MCA were used by the Province ofSouth Holland and the Ministry of Transport andWaterways (the decision-makers) to select a loca-tion and grant an environmental license. Thisdecision was challenged in the Council of State,the highest administrative court in the Nether-lands, by the town of Willemstad and others. Theview on this historical town, with a protectedheritage status, would have been obstructed bythe large ring-dike for a number of years. Thetown of Willemstad challenged various aspects ofthe MCA. After consulting with an external advi-sor with expertise on MCA, the court overruledthe decision about the location and environmentallicense (Raad van State, 1996).

In summary, the court made the followingpoints:

� The category ‘landscape and use’ includedstorage surplus material and additional capac-ity. The court decided on formal grounds thatthese criteria should not have been included,and that, therefore, the criterion ‘visual distur-bance’ within this category was weighed toolow;

� Within the same category, ‘visual disturbance’was weighed lower than ‘use functions’. Thecourt decided that, given the large impact on‘visual disturbance’, this weight was too low;

� The court made a field visit to the site, anddecided that the extent of the visual distur-bance and the impact on safety of recreationalshipping was underestimated;

� Within the category ‘dispersion’, the criterion‘isolation’ had a weight of 70%. Three of thealternatives had a score of 2.6 mm on thiscriterion, and the fourth alternative a score of3.6 mm Using interval standardization, 2.6mm is translated to 0, and 3.6 mm to 1. Thecourt decided that this implied that a differ-ence of 1 mm weighed more than the othertwo criteria in this category together and,therefore, was weighed too high.

� The use of the Evamix method was notchallenged.


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It is interesting to note that the court accepted theuse of the MCA method to translate the evalua-tion table and weights to a ranking of alterna-tives. This is remarkable, because the Evamixmethod is far from transparent. The fact that theresults can be reproduced and the method isaccepted in scientific circles is apparently suffi-cient. By linking differences in emission scores tothe weights, the court showed a clear understand-ing of the concept of swing weight. BecauseEvamix is a compensatory method, this is animportant issue. The town of Willemstad commis-sioned a small MCA study to show that, as aresult of these changes in scores and weights, thealternative near Willemstad was no longer thepreferred alternative. The Minister of Transportand Waterways was forced to report to parlia-ment that her decision was overruled, and that shewould start an open plan process to invite stake-holders to find new alternatives (Tweede Kamer25015, no. 2). This interrupt caused substantialdelay, and started a feedback loop from autho-rization to design. A third design loop was startedand MCA was used again to select a limitednumber of alternatives for detailed design. It isunclear, at present, how the selection of the pre-ferred alternative will be performed. What is in-teresting, in this case, is that the court used MCAas a means to discuss assessments of impacts, andas a means to differ in opinion about the impor-tance of impacts. Although it is unfortunate forthe decision-maker that the project is delayed,MCA proved its worth as a communication tool.

5. CONCLUSIONS

A few lessons can be learned from experience withMCA in the Netherlands. The role of MCA is tomake the decision process more transparent andthe information manageable for all stakeholders.The fear that stakeholders will perceive the MCAas a ‘black box’ and, therefore, reject its results,leads to the use of simple straightforward meth-ods, such as weighted summation, and limitedinterest in sensitivity analysis. Computational ef-fort is not the issue here, as software packages areavailable and widely used. A shift in emphasisfrom analysis/evaluation to communication canbe observed in many EIA processes. This shiftleads to glossy, well-designed evaluation reports,information bulletins and public presentations. In

some of these reports, for example, the Zandmaas(19) and the Hanze line (20) (see Table I), theanalysis is only represented in backgroundreports.

The importance of the MCA results for thefinal decision is not always clear. In many cases,the political decision process following the sub-mission of the EIA report results in compromisealternatives, usually based on a mixture of ele-ments from the original alternatives. These alter-natives are usually not compared with the originalalternatives. In several cases, for example, theBetuwe line, stakeholders have tried to make theirown calculations. Usually, this results in enor-mous effort and wrong results, which then enterthe public participation discussions. For thesegroups, the availability of a CD-ROM that in-cludes the evaluation table and the methods ap-plied would have been useful and would havehelped the public debate.

The main methodological challenge is not in thedevelopment of more sophisticated MCA meth-ods. Simple methods, such as weighted summa-tion, perform well in most cases. More importantis the support of problem definition and design.Building on the work of Keeney (1992), methodsshould be developed to provide more systematicsupport for building a consistent evaluationframework. Methods to support design are rare inthe MCA circuit. Development of methods thatcould use the results of evaluation to support thedesign of new alternatives could make a majorcontribution to the EIA decision process.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Drs M van Eckand Ir RI Seijffers of the Dutch Commission onEnvironmental Impact Assessment, and the twoanonymous referees for their review of the paperand their suggestions for improvement.

NOTES

1. The EIA reports included in table I were producedby the following environmental consultants and gov-ernmental organizations: 1. Witteveen en Bos, 2.Grontmij, 3. Micon Milieuconsultants, 4. Neder-landse Spoorwegen/Rijkswaterstaat, 5. Buro voorMilieumanagement, 6. Rijkswaterstaat Flevoland, 7.Province of North Holland, 8. Witteveen en Bos, 9.



Rijkswaterstaat Zuid-Holland, 10. Arcadis HeidemijAdvies, 11. DHV Milieu en Infrastructuur, 12. Wit-teveen en Bos, 13. Haskoning, 14. Grontmij, 15. DHVMilieu en Infrastructuur, 16. Arcadis Heidemij Advies,17. NS Railinfrabeheer, 18. NS Railinfrabeheer, 19.Witteveen en Bos, 20. Iwaco/DHV, 21. ArcadisHeidemij Advies.

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On the use of multi-criteria analysis in environmental impact assessment in The Netherlands

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