Integrative Fuzzy Cognitive Map model for trade-off identification

Description

A Fuzzy Cognitive Map is a model of a system built from concepts and the causal relationships between them, with the strength of each relationship expressed as a weight rather than as an equation. The maps for NAIAD were built from the cognitive models elicited from individual stakeholders, aggregated into a collective map that carries the different points of view rather than averaging them into one.

The value of the approach is that it can simulate. Once the map is weighted, "what if" scenarios can be run through it and the effect on every concept in the system read off — including the concepts that represent co-benefits. That is what allows the distribution of benefits to be examined: who gains from a measure, who does not, and at whose expense.

Applied at the Glinščica, Lower Danube and Medina del Campo demonstration sites, the model was used to detect the trade-offs and the conflicts that a strategy would generate, and to identify the networking interventions — the changes in how the actors interact — that would be needed for the measures to be implemented.

Applications to decision making in the insurance sector

A strategy whose benefits are unevenly distributed generates opposition, and opposition is a performance risk: the measure is delayed, modified or abandoned. Identifying the trade-offs before implementation is therefore a way of establishing whether the risk reduction that has been counted on will actually materialise.

Added value of this modelling approach

It handles qualitative knowledge and quantitative data in one structure, which is unusual and is what makes it usable with stakeholders who cannot express their understanding as a differential equation. It also preserves diversity: disagreement appears in the model rather than being resolved away.

What decision can be improved with this modelling approach

How a strategy should be configured so that the co-benefits people value are delivered; where compensation or mitigation is required; and which changes in institutional interaction are prerequisites for implementation.