Multi-criteria analysis and budget reallocation in long-term research planning

The authors present the results of a feasibility study conducted to the order of the Commission of the European Communities (Directorate-General for Science, Research, and Development). They used a method of pairwise comparisons to rank and rate a number of non-nuclear energy research programs under criteria which were felt to be relevant for a European energy policy. Thereafter, the authors employed the final scores of the programs to calculate optimal reallocations of the research budget, assuming that there is only a small number of distinct support levels for each program. The main objective of the study was to experiment with multi-criteria analysis and to design a robust reallocation method, although there is no unique numerical scale to quantify verbal human judgement and no unique cost-benefit relationship. The reallocation method is based on an elaborate sensitivity analysis.