Prioritizing Infrastructure Investments in Afghanistan with Multiagency Stakeholders and Deep Uncertainty of Emergent Conditions

Abstract

The Afghanistan National Development Strategy identified billions of dollars of needs for transportation, water, energy, telecommunications, and other necessary infrastructure development for the rebuilding of Afghanistan. With economic sustainability as a primary aim, the coordination and prioritization of investments has been a challenge in part because of Afghanistan’s volatile security situation along with the intricacies of the negotiating and coordinating efforts of numerous stakeholders. An understanding of the contributions of infrastructure systems and associated projects to the national development strategy is needed. This paper formulates a scenario-informed multicriteria approach to prioritize major project investments for infrastructure development subject to deep, nonprobabilistic uncertainties. The methods are inclusive of stakeholder values and accounts for deep uncertainties in governance, security, economy, environment, workforce, and other topics. The methods are applied in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province to assist in the selection among twenty-seven candidate infrastructure projects that are vulnerable to potential refugee immigration among other emergent conditions. The paper describes the relationships of selected projects to strategic goals while facilitating collaboration among government and nongovernment investors, donors, technologists, and other stakeholders.