THE railway sector is facing significant changes due to a variety of factors. On one hand, governments are promoting rail as a sustainable way of moving passengers and freight both domestically and across borders. On the other hand, the global socio-technical context is constantly evolving, with lasting ripple effects and fluctuations in how industries and individuals respond after major crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is the context and motivation that led the International Union of Railways’ (UIC) Asset Management Working Group, whose members are national infrastructure managers, to devise the Whole System Decision-Making (WiSDoM) project. The goal is to develop a decision-making framework capable of addressing the key challenges in asset management and rail infrastructure maintenance. The project aims to do this by formalising a methodology able to consider the main aspects of value-driven decision-making and then translate this methodology into real-world applications through a dedicated tool that integrates system mapping and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) techniques.
The WiSDoM project was launched in 2023, involving 10 infrastructure managers supported by two academic institutions and a management consultancy. It adopted a structured, two-phase methodology to ensure scientific rigour and practical relevance. Phase 1 focuses on developing frameworks grounded in academic and industry best practice. Phase 2 defines the WiSDoM decision-making methodology and related tools and applies it to use cases. Furthermore, Phase 2 consolidates the outcomes into practical guidelines and dissemination materials to support improved decision-making across the sector.
The framework developed during Phase 1 of the project, known as the value-based decision-making cycle, is an iterative process that integrates systems thinking to support complex decisions involving railway infrastructure. Phase 2 builds on these foundations by operationalising the framework into a practical methodology, co-designed with and applied to 10 use cases at infrastructure managers across Europe.
Decision-making methodology
The methodology developed to support value-based decision-making comprises three main stages:
• establishing the value-based decision-making foundation
• mapping the decision-making system elements, and
• prioritising the decision options.
Two preparatory activities are fundamental: the definition of an organisation-wide value framework and a system breakdown structure. The value framework captures and structures key value components, reflecting both internal and external stakeholders’ expectations. It ensures that all decisions are aligned with organisational priorities and trade-offs.
The system breakdown structure provides a hierarchical reference model, typically comprising levels such as transport network, line of route, route section, asset class, and asset component, which helps localise each decision and identify the relevant stakeholders. Together, these preparatory elements enable a system-of-systems (SoS) approach to decision-making that focuses on value generation across interconnected subsystems.
When we apply this to a railway context, in the first stage above, the infrastructure manager is required to identify causal relationships between factors by drawing on its own knowledge and available key metrics to reduce subjectivity. This ensures that decisions are grounded in a shared understanding of value and system dynamics.
The second and third stages are pure mathematical elaboration of an adapted version of decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (Dematel). Stage two provides the first tangible outputs to decision-makers: an analysis in terms of prominence and relation of the value components’ importance. This takes the form of an influential relation map (IRM) that divides value components into quadrants based on whether they are deemed essential, determinant, impactful or independent. In the third stage, the prioritisation of decision options is based on evaluation of the strategic priority index to consider the relevance of each value component as well as the impact each decision option has on each value component.
Use cases
The application of the value-driven decision-making framework has been carried out within the WiSDoM project through 10 use cases, each one carried out by a separate infrastructure manager, and focused on a specific asset management decision.
Across the use cases, the application of the methodology involves the following key activities:
Stage 1:
Stage 2:
• Definition of the asset management decision under analysis and the related decision options to be evaluated: the main areas of the decisions addressed by the use cases fall into maintenance strategy definition, line of route value optimisation and digitalisation implementation.
• Modelling the socio-technical system under analysis: each infrastructure manager draws its own conceptual system map, highlighting and describing the relations between relevant stakeholders, value components, and related metrics. Synthetizing these issues into a map able to schematise systems levels and related assets, stakeholders and associated value, helps in managing complexity when referring to a specific decision-making process.
• Identification of the most influential value components for the specific decision addressed: these are mapped against the relevant stakeholders identified and their expectations. The value components serve as the decision criteria driving the prioritisation of options. The results indicate that each use case, addressing a specific decision and relating to a specific organisation-dependent value framework, addresses different relevant value components such as reliability and availability, train punctuality, quality of services and products.
• Assessment of the role of relevant value components in decision dynamics: starting from the DIM built in Stage 1 and selecting the relevant value component, the IRM is automatically generated. The IRM classifies value components based on their strategic role, such as being primarily causal, affected, or neutral factors in the decision context. An Azure-based application, developed by the research team, supports this process by allowing infrastructure managers to input their influence matrices and retrieve their corresponding IRMs.
Stage 3:
• Prioritisation of decision options: this is fundamental to making the developed methodology effective in achieving the overall objective of the WiSDoM project. Indeed, the value component analysis completed in the previous stages has delivered mid-term results that already provide insights to infrastructure managers to inform which value components they should invest in, based on the IRM. Prioritising options means that value components are properly weighted and the impact of each option on each value component must be evaluated. The weights are automatically calculated based on the data of the direct influence matrix; indeed, the values within the direct influence matrix represent links and their weights that can be interpreted according to graph theory, which is used to elaborate value component weights by adopting centrality measures.
The impact of each option on the value components must be assessed by the infrastructure manager, leveraging, when available, expected benefits on key metrics connected to the value components. The weighted average of value components and the impact of each option on those value components will enable value generation per option to be estimated, thus creating a ranking to help the infrastructure manager decide on the best decision option to pursue.
• Carrying out sensitivity analysis for a risk-informed decision-making process: given the uncertainty that may arise at all stages, as infrastructure managers are required to input values based on expert judgement or previous experience, it is important to introduce a sensitivity analysis to evaluate relevant changes in the output based on the expected variability of inputs. Together with the additional consideration of risk, this allows the output to be more robust for enhanced confidence in asset management and maintenance decisions.
The application of the WiSDoM decision-support methodology has demonstrated that a whole-system, value-based approach is both achievable and beneficial for infrastructure managers. Several valuable insights have emerged from its application across 10 diverse use cases.
Value framework
A key observation from participating infrastructure managers is that the set of value components, as well as their inter-relationships, are highly dependent on the specific decision-making context, primarily due to variations in stakeholder involvement and strategic priorities. This reinforces the importance of grounding the entire decision-making process in a well-defined, company-wide value framework that reflects organisational goals and stakeholder expectations. The clarity and coherence of this framework are essential, as they heavily influence the construction of the system map and the effectiveness of Dematel-based analysis.
Secondly, building causal relationships between value components benefits significantly from a metric-based approach. By linking value components through quantitative indicators, infrastructure managers can reduce the subjectivity inherent in expert judgement and strengthen the robustness and transparency of the direct influence matrix. A more objective relationship model not only enhances the credibility of the analysis but also reduces the frequency of revisions required, enabling the matrix to evolve gradually as new value components emerge or organisational priorities shift.
Thirdly, the use of the IRM derived from Dematel enables infrastructure managers to better understand which value components serve as strategic leverage points and which act more as indicators of impact. This classification supports clearer prioritisation in asset management decisions and can also inform the development of long-term investment strategies. The direct influence matrix and resulting IRM serve as practical tools for asset management functions, supporting cross-functional communication and shared understanding of value priorities within the organisation. These tools facilitate more consistent, evidence-based, and value-aligned decision-making across different levels of infrastructure management.
Finally, the integration of Dematel and the WiSDoM Strategic Index successfully supports transparent, evidence-based prioritisation of options. In fact, the Strategic Index provides a useful comparative measure but should not be treated as an “absolute” value; instead, it helps to reveal trade-offs and supports structured discussion.
The use case applications helped refine the practical guidance for infrastructure managers seeking to transition towards whole-system, value-driven decision-making in line with ISO 55000, including the clarification of the involvement of the main roles and responsibilities of the organisational functions in each phase, contributing to and interacting within the decision-support process.
In this way, infrastructure managers can effectively manage the complexity that arises from a diverse stakeholder base, the wide range of assets within their portfolio and an ever-changing socio-technical context. The first beneficiaries will be the infrastructure managers currently taking part in WiSDoM (see panel, p35), but the aim is to use the results of the project to demonstrate the approach in multiple contexts as a guideline to be reproduced worldwide.
WiSDoM participants
THE WiSDoM project involved the active participation of the following AMWG members:
• Italian Rail Network (RFI)
• Infrastructure Portugal (IP)
• Swiss Federal Railways (SBB)
• Adif, Spain
• French National Railways (SNCF)
• Network Rail (NR), Britain
• Väylävirasto (FTIA), Norway
• Trafikverket, Sweden
• Irish Rail (IÉ)
• Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB)
WiSDoM Phase 1 was carried out with the support of Asset Management Consulting (ACML) and the University of Cambridge.
WiSDoM Phase 2 was carried out with the support of Politecnico di Milano.
*Irene Roda is associate professor at the School of Management of Politecnico di Milano, Adalberto Polenghi is assistant professor at the School of Management at Politecnico di Milano; Donatella Fochesato is the chair of the UIC Asset Management Working Group (AMWG) and the head of asset management at Italian Rail Network (RFI); and Konstantina Kopsalidou is senior advisor for infrastructure and asset management at the International Union of Railways (UIC).
