Evaluation of Large-Scale Railway Projects: an Unsystem Approach

Abstract

The problem of assessing the social effectiveness of large-scale railway projects (hereinafter referred to as the CPAW) is considered in this article in the light of J. Kornais system paradigm and its instrumental specification as a non-system approach. In this context, the CPCR is analyzed as large and complex socio-technical systems. The objects of research are the Lensko-Kamchatskaya and Subpolar railway lines, which are at the stage of pre-investment studies in the first case and partially implemented in the second, when the uncertainty of costs and results is extremely high. To assess the comparative effectiveness of these projects, computer products were used – foreign and domestic, designed to work within the framework of the theory of making complex decisions with semiverbal models and expert information. Computational experiments have shown that different computer products, as a means of supporting investment decision-making procedures, give analysts different recommendations about the preference of compared projects. It is shown that the reason is inadequate accounting for foreign products (as applied to large-scale projects) of the uncertainty factor. The conclusion is made about the productivity of the tools of the neosystemic approach implemented by the authors of the article as an integrator of verbal and mathematical models in evaluating large-scale projects in a situation of uncertainty.