Multi-criteria mapping and prioritization of Arctic and North Atlantic maritime safety and security needs

This paper details a methodology for the mapping and prioritization of needs for research and innova-tion across a multi-disciplinary topic area. The methodology is applied to needs arising from the field of Arctic maritime safety and security, in order to provide a roadmap for an ongoing multi-national Eu-ropean Union (EU) funded research project. A needs hierarchy containing topics, needs and sub-needs is first formed by utilization of multiple sources including facilitated stakeholder workshops, literature review and semi-structured questionnaires. A further round of stakeholder opinion is then sought in or-der to ascertain the importance and level of challenge involved in solving each identified sub-need. This information is utilized to form a PICK (Possible, Implement, Challenge, Keep Back) chart in order to vi-sualize and categorize the sub-needs. A goal programming knapsack model is formulated to select a set of priority needs that satisfy goals relating to the maximization of overall importance, the balance be-tween topics at the first level of the need hierarchy and the balance between more challenge (for longer term research) and implement (for shorter term implementation) needs. Sensitivity analysis is conducted around the number of chosen projects and the goal programming weights. Conclusions are hence drawn with respect to the methodology and the Arctic maritime safety and security field of application.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )

Automated summary

This paper presents a methodology for mapping and prioritizing research and innovation needs in a multi-disciplinary field. The methodology is applied to the field of Arctic maritime safety and security to guide a European Union funded research project. The methodology involves creating a hierarchy of needs through stakeholder workshops, literature review, and questionnaires, and then seeking stakeholder opinion to determine the importance and challenge level of each sub-need. A goal programming knapsack model is used to select priority needs based on overall importance, balance between topics, and balance between long-term research and short-term implementation needs.