A dynamic feasibility analysis of public investment projects: An integrated approach using system dynamics and agent-based modeling

Increasingly, public sector investment projects face a dynamic environment that incorporates both macroscopic system and microscopic individuals. Prior attempts to analyze the feasibility of those projects, however, have been subject to limitations in accommodating such environmental changes. As a remedial measure, the combination of system dynamics (SD) and agent-based modeling (ABM) is proposed due to their complementary strengths. Consequently, this paper suggests a new approach to dynamic feasibility analysis for public investment projects through an integrated simulation model using SD and ABM. The former SD part elucidates the relationships among system elements that constitute project's benefits and costs, while the latter ABM part depicts users' emergent behavior with their heterogeneity. A bridge construction case study demonstrates the applicability of the proposed approach. The findings show that the proposed approach can provide a valuable and flexible framework for analyzing project feasibility in a dynamic environment. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. APM and IPMA. All rights reserved.