Chapter Reducing inconsistency in AHP by combining Delphi and Nudge theory and network analysis of the judgements: an application to future scenarios

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a Multi-Criteria method in which a number of decision factors (typically criteria and alternatives) are compared pairwise by one or more experts, using the Saaty scale, with the goal of sorting the alternatives (Saaty, 1977; 1980). For group AHP the Delphi method can be used in parallel with the AHP (Di Zio and Maretti, 2014), and this allows the search for a consensus on each pairwise judgement. A big issue of the AHP regards the inconsistency of the pairwise comparison matrices and here we propose a new method to reduce the inconsistency. As a solution we exploit the Nudge theory (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008) and from the second round of the Delphi survey, we calculate and circulate a Nudge to “gentle push” the experts towards more consistent evaluations. Furthermore, we propose the representation of the AHP matrices through graphs. In a direct graph two nodes are linked with two direct and weighted edges (or one edge with the direction based on the weights), where the weights indicate the evaluation given by an expert or, for a group, the geometric mean of the judgements. This type of visualization facilitates the reading of the results and could also be used as real-time feedback in the Delphi process, by displaying on the edges also a measure of variability. An application is proposed, on the evaluation of four future scenarios on the regulation of genetic modification experiments, assessed by a panel of 27 experts according to different criteria (plausibility, consistency and simplicity). The application demonstrated that it is possible to: a) reduce the inconsistency; b) collect useful textual material which enrich the AHP itself; c) use the inconsistency index as a stopping criterion for the Delphi rounds; d) display the pairwise comparison matrices with graphs

Chapter Unsupervised spatial data mining for the development of future scenarios: a Covid-19 application

In the context of Futures Studies, the scenario development process permits to make assumptions on what the futures can be in order to support better today decisions. In the initial stages of the scenario building (Framing and Scanning phases), the process requires much time and efforts to scanning data and information (reading of documents, literature review and consultation of experts) to understand more about the object of the foresight study. The daily use of social networks causes an exponential increase of data and for this reason here we deal with the problem of speeding up and optimizing the Scanning phase by applying a new combined method based on the analysis of tweets with the use of unsupervised classification models, text-mining and spatial data mining techniques. For the purpose of having a qualitative overview, we applied the bag-of-words model and a Sentiment Analysis with the Afinn and Vader algorithms. Then, in order to extrapolate the influence factors, and the relevant key factors (Kayser and Blind, 2017; 2020) the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used (Tong and Zhang, 2016). Furthermore, to acquire also spatial information we used spatial data mining technique to extract georeferenced data from which it was possible to analyse and obtain a geographic analysis of the data. To showcase our method, we provide an example using Covid-19 tweets (Uhl and Schiebel, 2017), upon which 5 topics and 6 key factors have been extracted. In the last instance, for each influence factor, a cartogram was created through the relative frequencies in order to have a spatial distribution of the users discussing each particular topic. The results fully answer the research objectives and the model used could be a new approach that can offer benefits in the scenario developments process

Future Scenarios and Support Interventions for the Family: Involving Expert's Participation though a Mixed-Method Research Study

From a recent Delphi survey on the possible scenarios that will involve the family in the next ten years, some situations emerged, judged by the experts as particularly relevant, concerning the growing conditioning due to the professional commitments for women in organizing family life, the greater tendency of young adults living to their parents and the intensity of solidarity networks between generations. On the basis of some focus groups, eight possible intervention proposals have been identified to deal with any difficulties related to the emerged scenario and, in particular, to support women and families. In order to rank them according to their efficacy and feasibility, the multi-criteria decision-making technique Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) will be applied. Key words: Family studies, Future studies, Delphi, AHP, scenario research methodolog

Simulation of urban development in the City of Rome: Framework, methodology, and problem solving

JTUL vol 3, no 2, pp 85-105In Italy’s case, the implementation of the UrbanSIM model involved the territory of Rome, including the municipalities of Rome and Fiumicino. The main goal was to build scenarios regarding the future of economic deconcentration. Rome is the largest municipality in Europe, with an inhabited surface area only slightly smaller than that of Greater London and almost double that of the inner Paris suburbs (the Petite Couronne). The spatial distribution of buildings within the municipality is distinctive. Unbuilt areas comprise 73 percent of the territory. These voids are often farmland (paradoxically, Rome is the largest rural municipality in Italy) or areas with high environmental, historic or cultural value. Fiumicino, previously part of the municipality of Rome, became an independent municipality in 1991. Its autonomy, made all the more significant because Fiumicino hosts the international airport, marked the start of an extensive process of economic deconcentration along the route connecting Rome to the airport. In Italy’s case, the implementation of the UrbanSIM model posed several challenges, notably the availability, homogeneity and completeness of data. This paper uses four specific cases (land use, travel times, accessibility, and residential land values) to propose a general methodology to solve problems related to missing or non-homogeneous data. For the land use, we simply combine two different land use data sources, while for accessibility and travel time data, we propose the use of geostatistical methods in order to estimate missing and unavailable data, calculating also the accuracy of the predictions. For the residential land values, which are discrete data, we suggest the use of deterministic interpolation techniques. While it has not yet been possible to implement the calibration stage, some simulation outputs are presented

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field

Chapter Reducing inconsistency in AHP by combining Delphi and Nudge theory and network analysis of the judgements: an application to future scenarios

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a Multi-Criteria method in which a number of decision factors (typically criteria and alternatives) are compared pairwise by one or more experts, using the Saaty scale, with the goal of sorting the alternatives (Saaty, 1977; 1980). For group AHP the Delphi method can be used in parallel with the AHP (Di Zio and Maretti, 2014), and this allows the search for a consensus on each pairwise judgement. A big issue of the AHP regards the inconsistency of the pairwise comparison matrices and here we propose a new method to reduce the inconsistency. As a solution we exploit the Nudge theory (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008) and from the second round of the Delphi survey, we calculate and circulate a Nudge to “gentle push” the experts towards more consistent evaluations. Furthermore, we propose the representation of the AHP matrices through graphs. In a direct graph two nodes are linked with two direct and weighted edges (or one edge with the direction based on the weights), where the weights indicate the evaluation given by an expert or, for a group, the geometric mean of the judgements. This type of visualization facilitates the reading of the results and could also be used as real-time feedback in the Delphi process, by displaying on the edges also a measure of variability. An application is proposed, on the evaluation of four future scenarios on the regulation of genetic modification experiments, assessed by a panel of 27 experts according to different criteria (plausibility, consistency and simplicity). The application demonstrated that it is possible to: a) reduce the inconsistency; b) collect useful textual material which enrich the AHP itself; c) use the inconsistency index as a stopping criterion for the Delphi rounds; d) display the pairwise comparison matrices with graphs

Chapter Reducing inconsistency in AHP by combining Delphi and Nudge theory and network analysis of the judgements: an application to future scenarios

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a Multi-Criteria method in which a number of decision factors (typically criteria and alternatives) are compared pairwise by one or more experts, using the Saaty scale, with the goal of sorting the alternatives (Saaty, 1977; 1980). For group AHP the Delphi method can be used in parallel with the AHP (Di Zio and Maretti, 2014), and this allows the search for a consensus on each pairwise judgement. A big issue of the AHP regards the inconsistency of the pairwise comparison matrices and here we propose a new method to reduce the inconsistency. As a solution we exploit the Nudge theory (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008) and from the second round of the Delphi survey, we calculate and circulate a Nudge to “gentle push” the experts towards more consistent evaluations. Furthermore, we propose the representation of the AHP matrices through graphs. In a direct graph two nodes are linked with two direct and weighted edges (or one edge with the direction based on the weights), where the weights indicate the evaluation given by an expert or, for a group, the geometric mean of the judgements. This type of visualization facilitates the reading of the results and could also be used as real-time feedback in the Delphi process, by displaying on the edges also a measure of variability. An application is proposed, on the evaluation of four future scenarios on the regulation of genetic modification experiments, assessed by a panel of 27 experts according to different criteria (plausibility, consistency and simplicity). The application demonstrated that it is possible to: a) reduce the inconsistency; b) collect useful textual material which enrich the AHP itself; c) use the inconsistency index as a stopping criterion for the Delphi rounds; d) display the pairwise comparison matrices with graphs

Quanto e come sono competenti gli esperti del panel? Analisi del loro contributo informativo alla ricerca sulla famiglia

Vengono analizzati gli effetti della autovalutazione della expertise o competenze degli esperti coinvolti in un panel Delph

Chapter Unsupervised spatial data mining for the development of future scenarios: a Covid-19 application

In the context of Futures Studies, the scenario development process permits to make assumptions on what the futures can be in order to support better today decisions. In the initial stages of the scenario building (Framing and Scanning phases), the process requires much time and efforts to scanning data and information (reading of documents, literature review and consultation of experts) to understand more about the object of the foresight study. The daily use of social networks causes an exponential increase of data and for this reason here we deal with the problem of speeding up and optimizing the Scanning phase by applying a new combined method based on the analysis of tweets with the use of unsupervised classification models, text-mining and spatial data mining techniques. For the purpose of having a qualitative overview, we applied the bag-of-words model and a Sentiment Analysis with the Afinn and Vader algorithms. Then, in order to extrapolate the influence factors, and the relevant key factors (Kayser and Blind, 2017; 2020) the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) was used (Tong and Zhang, 2016). Furthermore, to acquire also spatial information we used spatial data mining technique to extract georeferenced data from which it was possible to analyse and obtain a geographic analysis of the data. To showcase our method, we provide an example using Covid-19 tweets (Uhl and Schiebel, 2017), upon which 5 topics and 6 key factors have been extracted. In the last instance, for each influence factor, a cartogram was created through the relative frequencies in order to have a spatial distribution of the users discussing each particular topic. The results fully answer the research objectives and the model used could be a new approach that can offer benefits in the scenario developments process