MULTICRITERIA EVALUATION IN A POLICY ANALYSIS OF A RHINE ESTUARY1

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Abstract
As part of a major project to provide the Rhine delta protection from North Sea floods, the Dutch installed sluices at Haringvliet in the late 1960s and converted the Haringvliet‐Hollandsch Diep‐Biesbosch (HHB) estuary into a tidally‐damped, fresh‐water system. Two decades later, the Dutch Rijkswaterstaat commissioned a study of alternative policies for managing the sluices and removing contaminated bottom sediments, including policies which would at least partially restore estuarine conditions to the HHB. This paper describes the public policy analysis comprising that study, focusing on the role played by formal mullicriteria evaluation (MCE), including the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Through the tasks of value‐tree structuring, impact measurement, and criterion prioritization, the MCE influenced the entire structure of the analysis, became an integral part of it, and, despite initial skepticism among the participants about the utility of multicriteria analysis, was subsequently accepted and viewed favorably by the majority of them.