Integration between the Strategic Choice Approach and the Community Impact Analysis: a methodological proposal for complex regional decision-making processes

The high level of complexity that usually characterises extended public projects should induce local authorities to use Problem Structuring Methods (PSM) in their initial stages, during which the decision problems and processes have to be structured, the uncertainties have to be analyzed and controlled and the project feasibility has to be verified. At this early stages it is crucial not only to correctly identify the nature of uncertainties, key decision problems, priorities and all of the links between the different choices, but also to have a clear, complete and unambiguous overview of the project context which sets out the actual role and potential interests of the actors and organizations potentially affected by the project. This contribute presents a methodological advance for improving project feasibility studies based on a possible integration between the Strategic Choice Approach (SCA) [1] and the Community Impact Analysis (CIA) [2], assuming that a single methodology could be empowered by means of its integration with other complementary approaches. SCA, which is proposed by [3] as a method for complex and unstructured decision problems, is normally used to support collaborative decision makers in structuring and managing possible phases of the future decision-making process, as a sort of preliminary guidelines in the feasibility study that help to identify the key decision problems that need to be faced and to reduce uncertainties. The CIA is here proposed as a possible tool to complement SCA: the integrated application of these two tools constitutes a methodological proposal for a new way of studying the feasibility of complex regional projects, in which it is difficult or premature to involve public or private actors, but where awareness of the potential negative or positive impacts that the stakeholders might perceive is essential to structure the decision process and guarantee the project feasibility itself. Such integration of SCA and CIA methodologies is an interesting proposal, as it improves the problem structuring potentialities of SCA and makes more operational the role of CIA of riding over the difficulty of knowing the nature and the interests of a complex actor network. An application, in relation to a complex regional public project in north-west Italy, is proposed as an example of this approach and its possible use in complex decision-making contexts, where this kind of analysis represents a crucial preparatory stage to support the strategies of the regional authority concerned to correctly evaluate the project’s implementation and feasibility.