Model for Decision Support on Investments in Road Infrastructure at the National Level

The transport infrastructure sector in the Czech Republic faces enormous differences between investment needs and possibilities of its funding. Insufficient amount of financial sources has been invested in transport infrastructure for several decades and the need for investments has been growing. The thesis deals with the public policy problem, where the road infrastructure does not sufficiently meet the needs of the population. As a financial indicator of unmet needs the short-investment of road infrastructure has been chosen. The problem is a result of both the content and the consequent effects of public policies adopted and also a result of failure to adopt appropriate policy measures that need to be taken in response to changes in conditions and assumptions. As a prerequisite to solve the problem the decision-making bodies from public administration need to have high-quality documentation. The thesis describes current shortcomings in the planning and financing of road infrastructure in the Czech Republic at the central level and proposes a general model for strategic planning based on a system approach. The proper use of proposed model within stages of policy analysis could bring certain improvements of the current state. The proposed model for supporting the creation of public policy documents in the area of road infrastructure combines the multi-criteria analysis to prioritize planned projects in time with long-term prediction of financial resources which can be used for those projects. The key part of the general model is its financial part that uses the tools of knowledge management and proposes the development of a system dynamic simulation model. Exemplary system dynamics model analyzing the short-investment problem of road infrastructure in the Czech Republic is described and used to perform experiments to confirm or reject hypotheses.