Assessing the efficacy of dynamic adaptive planning of infrastructure: results from computational experiments

In this paper we assess the efficacy of a dynamic adaptive planning (DAP) approach for guiding the long-term development of infrastructure. The efficacy of the approach is tested on the specific case of airport strategic planning. Utilizing a fast and simple model of an airport, and a composition of small models that can generate a wide spectrum of alternative futures, the performance of a dynamic adaptive plan is compared with the performance of a static, rigid implementation plan across a wide spectrum of conceivable futures. These computational experiments reveal that the static rigid plan outperforms the dynamic adaptive plan in only a small part of the spectrum. Moreover, given the wide array of possible futures, the dynamic adaptive plan has a narrower spread of outcomes than the static rigid plan, implying that the dynamic adaptive plan exposes planners to less uncertainty about its future performance despite the wide variety of uncertainties that are present. These computational results confirm theoretical hypotheses in the literature that DAP approaches are more efficacious for planning under uncertainty.