Multi-criteria Decision Analysis Approach to Site Suitability of U.S. Department of Defense Humanitarian Assistance Projects

This paper seeks to provide a framework for determining best locations for US Department of Defense (DOD) Humanitarian Assistance (HA) projects as well as proposing a method to selecting and optimal portfolio of DOD projects for an area of operation through data-driven analyses and an understanding of priorities and tradeoffs. To identify optimal locations for HA projects a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) approach to site suitability analysis is presented along with a case-study using data from El Salvador to demonstrate the utility of the approach. A Portfolio Decision Analysis (PDA) is proposed as a method to generate a portfolio with the most optimal combination of HA projects to lower resource investment risk and maximize desired impact. These two methods are intended as decision aids for HA managers and project nominators in the DOD HA project approval process.