Title: A decision support system that incorporates price volatility in risk classifying regional food security

Authors: Rueben Laryea; Kenneth Carling; Catia Cialani

Addresses: School of Technology and Business Studies, Dalarna University, Högskolegatan 2, 791 31 Falun, Borlänge, Sweden ' School of Technology and Business Studies, Dalarna University, Högskolegatan 2, 791 31 Falun, Borlänge, Sweden ' School of Technology and Business Studies, Dalarna University, Högskolegatan 2, 791 31 Falun, Borlänge, Sweden

Abstract: Consider a cooperative group of decision-makers striving to strategise against failing to attain a goal. The risk of failure depends on external factors and the decision-makers' assessment and acceptance of risk. This setting is complex due to multiple objectives and criteria, making it difficult for the individual and group of decision-maker(s) to assess the risk coherently. To aid humans in this situation formal risk frameworks such as utilities additives discriminants (UTADIS) have been developed. The contribution of this paper is to extend such framework with objective measures of volatility preserving its features. The solution is demonstrated and implemented on the problem of UN's policy-makers monitoring the sustainable development goal of food security. The solution provides both global risk scores and the utility threshold in an efficient manner such that misclassification between the decision-makers' preferred classification and their authentic classification is mimimised and obtained within one iteration.

Keywords: food security; United Nations; UTADIS; price volatility; risk assessment; classification; sustainable development goals; decision support system; criteria; alternatives.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRAM.2020.114368

International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, 2020 Vol.23 No.3/4, pp.223 - 235

Accepted: 14 Apr 2020
Published online: 20 Apr 2021 *

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