Compromise Ranking Approach with Bootstrap Confidence Intervals for Risk Assessment in Port Management Projects

Risk management of port projects relies on the sequential analysis of management activities, which results in project-specific responses for reducing risk. Risk assessment has previously been investigated in port projects; however, it is still comparatively neglected due to the complexity of the risk assessment process with nonparametric resampling methods and interval computations. In risk assessment, required data and experts' judgments often are limited. Moreover, statistical distributions of parameters, which play a significant role, are usually unknown. Hence, traditional approaches do not have enough accuracy to assist such problems. This paper presents a novel compromise ranking approach based on bootstrap confidence intervals for the risk assessment in port projects. The ranking of project risks is obtained through comparison of interval numbers based on bootstrap resampling method according to a new weight of the strategy for the majority of risk assessment criteria and optimism level of experts. The proposed approach is implemented in a real case study in developing countries to validate and investigate its performance in a port industry. Consequently, the traditional and proposed approaches are discussed in detail and compared from different viewpoints. (C) 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.