Bridging the Gap in Transport Project Evaluation: Accounting for the Inaccuracies in Demand Forecasts and Construction Costs Estimations

For decades researchers have claimed that demand forecasts and construction costs estimations are assigned with large degrees of uncertainty, commonly referred to as Optimism Bias. A severe consequence is that ex-ante socio-economic evaluation of infrastructure projects becomes inaccurate and can lead to unsatisfactory investment decisions. Thus there is a need for better risk assessment and decision support, which is addressed by the recently developed UNITE-DSS model. It is argued that this simulation-based model can offer decision makers new and better ways to deal with risk assessment.