The Prioritization of Risk Mitigation Using the Turtle Island Matrix

In Ojibway (Anishinabek) mythology, North America is referred to as Turtle Island.  The Environmental Review Panel decided to adapt the concept of Turtle Island to fit their evaluation of the environmental, social and economic impact of the development proposals they will be receiving.  The Environmental Review Panel believes that all of the 13 characteristics, shown in Figure 1, must work in harmony for the community to obtain sustainable development.  Figure 1 shows the traditional Ojibway names for these characteristics along with their English translations.

Figure 1: The Turtle Island Matrix

Although, the Serpent River First Nation is highly concerned about all of the elements in the Turtle Island Matrix, not every project will impact the elements in the same way.  Some projects might have specific impacts on some elements and not as much on other elements.  This suggests that risk mitigation resources might be allocated differently for different projects.  We developed a tool based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process [1] to assist in the allocation of resources towards the various elements of the Turtle Island Matrix on a project-by-project basis and for a combination of projects overall (see Figure 2 for an example).

Figure 2: Example Allocations for Risk Mitigation for Two Economic Development Projects

To determine the allocation of resources, the members of the Environmental Review Panel would need to evaluate each of the proposals for their relative importance.  This is done by completing a series of pair-wise comparisons.  First, the Panel must evaluate which of the projects is more important and click the appropriate button on the user interface.  Then the Panel would express how much more important the one project is compared to the other projects using a scroll bar on a scale from “1 – equally important” to “9 – absolutely more important” (see Figure 3).  From these pair-wise comparisons, the program can calculate the “weights of the proposals” using the software in an Excel spreadsheet [2].  These weights are represented as percentage values that sum to 100%.

Figure 3: Pair-wise Comparison of Economic Development Proposals

Then the Panel would do a similar set of pair-wise comparisons for the Turtle Island Matrix elements as they correspond to the individual proposals (see Figure 4).  When all of the pair-wise comparisons are provided, the program calculates the percentage of effort to invest in each element to avoid risk.  Again, for each project, the effort percentages for the Turtle Island Matrix elements sum to 100%.

Figure 4: Pair-wise Comparisons for the Turtle Island Matrix Elements for a Particular Economic Development Proposal

To get the overall resource allocation, the weights of the proposals is multiplied by the effort percentages for each Turtle Island Matrix element and summed over the proposals.  The final results can be displayed as a graph as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Graphical Display of the Resource Allocation among the Turtle Island Matrix Elements Overall

It is hoped this methodology, implemented in an easy to use spreadsheet, will help the ERP allocate the resources available for risk mitigation to the various elements of the Turtle Island Matrix for the economic development proposals they receive.

References

1. Saaty, Thomas L. [1980], The Analytic Hierarchy Process: Planning, Priority Setting, Resource Allocation, McGraw-Hill, New York.
2. Albright, S. Christian, [2001], VBA for Modelers: Developing Decision Support Systems with Microsoft Excel, Duxbury, Pacific Grove, California.