Evaluation of Stakeholder Assessment and Engagement Techniques for Incorporation Into Structured Decision‐Making Processes

ABSTRACT Incorporating the priorities and values of relevant stakeholders and decision‐makers is essential for effective wastewater management decision‐making to obtain results that are supported by the relevant parties and, consequently, can be implemented. Here, we report results from evaluations of stakeholder assessment and engagement techniques in real‐world contexts to further evaluate a decision‐making process previously developed as part of a broader research program for the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), the regional water and wastewater utility serving 4 million people in Southeast Michigan. Two important decisions to be made by the GLWA, namely, (1) improvements to biosolids management and (2) upgrades to their bar racks and grit chambers, provided the basis for this assessment. We found that structured interviews of potential stakeholders and decision‐makers produce useful information to identify relevant parties and determine decision goals, objectives, and criteria. Identification of primary responses and keywords for each of the survey questions, followed by an affinity analysis to identify key themes and outcomes of the interviews, provided useful results. Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) integrates the priorities and values of stakeholders and decision‐makers and enhances interactions between stakeholders and decision‐makers, increasing knowledge transfer, encouraging the discovery of new perspectives, and helping stakeholders to consider new alternatives or combinations of existing options. Eliminating inferior alternatives during the screening and detailed evaluation phases increased clarity and efficiency. Tools such as data envelope analysis (DEA), analytic hierarchy process (AHP), simple additive weighting (SAW), and technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) were found to supplement technical analyses with the priorities and values of various stakeholders and decision‐makers.