The goal of impact assessment is to understand what will happen if a decision is implemented and to quantify and characterise the effects of possible solutions across relevant criteria (e.g. environmental, economic, social). The impact assessment phase defines the consequences of implementing each alternative for each criterion by using suitable indicators for measuring the impact.
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Impact assessment methods
There are various ways to assess impacts, including:
- Expert assessments.
- Results from field studies.
- Environmental models.
- Simulation models.
Impacts are typically presented in the form of a two-dimensional matrix, with alternatives on one dimension and criteria on another, where the cells describe the consequence of each alternative for each criterion
Outcome of the phase: A matrix describing the impacts of each alternative against each criterion or indicator.
Follow up Questions for the AI
Ask the following questions to get more information from the AI:
- Can you elaborate the different ways of assessing the impacts and in which kinds of cases they are suitable?
- What issues should be taken into account when deciding which method to use when assessing the impact?
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Benefits and Risks of Using AI
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Benefits (+)
- Support for finding studies assessing the impacts of actions in these kinds of cases.
- Support for verifying the scale and direction of the impacts.
- Support for identifying means of measuring the impact.
Benefit Scoring: + Low
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Risks (!!)
- Use of generic impact estimates without being able to take the current decision context into account.
- Loss of transparency due to the use of methods that are not mathematically rigorous.
- Loss of stakeholders’ commitment to the process due to AI not being able to assess the impacts correctly.
- False feeling of objectivity when using AI to assess the impacts – impacts are typically context-dependent.
Risk Scoring: !! Medium
Questions to understand the benefits and risks of AI
Questions to make use of the benefits of AI
- I have this criterion/indicator: [name of the criterion/indicator]. Can you suggest different ways in which the impacts of the alternatives are typically measured in terms of this criterion?
The impacts themselves are typically context dependent, but AI can give suggestions on how to measure them.
- I have this problem: [problem description including criteria and alternatives]. Can you give me examples of how earlier studies have assessed the impacts within a similar context?
After getting the response, the decision analyst should carefully analyse whether the conditions of the earlier study are sufficiently similar to allow the results here.
- I have these alternatives and criteria in my problem: [description of criteria and alternatives]. Can you show me any studies in which impacts of these alternatives have been assessed in terms of these criteria?
After getting the response, the decision analyst should carefully analyse whether the conditions of the earlier study are sufficiently similar to allow the results here.
- (After defining the impact matrix) Do these impacts seem reasonable and if not, explain why?
AI can be applied to roughly verify whether the scale and direction of the impacts are valid.
Questions to avoid the risks
- Use of generic impact estimates without being able to take the current decision context into account.
- Loss of transparency due to the use of methods that are not mathematically rigorous.
- Loss of stakeholders’ commitment to the process due to AI not being able to assess the impacts correctly.
- False feeling of objectivity when using AI to assess the impacts – impacts are typically context-dependent.
What NOT to ask
I have a problem with these alternatives and criteria: [List of alternatives and criteria]? What are the impacts of the alternatives in terms of different indicators?
The impacts are typically very context dependent and the response from AI can be very biased in it does not properly understand the decision context.