IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/isochp/978-1-4419-9943-6_14.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Portfolio Decision Analysis: Lessons from Military Applications

In: Portfolio Decision Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Roger Chapman Burk

    (US Military Academy, West Point)

  • Gregory S. Parnell

    (US Military Academy, West Point)

Abstract

We review the use of portfolio decision analysis in military applications, such as weapon systems, types of forces, installations, and military research and development projects. We start by comparing military and commercial portfolio problems in general, discussing the distinguishing characteristics of the military decision environment: hostile and adaptive adversaries, a public decision process with multiple stakeholders, and high system complexity. Then we list and summarize 24 military DA applications published from 1992 to 2010. We find that the most widespread prominent feature of these applications is the careful modeling of value from multiple objectives. Mathematical optimization is not so common, but it can be important when a large number of interdependencies or side constraints makes it hard to find good feasible candidate portfolios. Quantitative methods of accounting for risk are surprisingly rare, considering the high level of uncertainty in the military environment. We analyze six of the applications in more detail, looking at how they model portfolio value calculation, swing weight assessment, constraints and dependencies, and uncertainty and risk. An appendix provides a recommended procedure for portfolio decision analysis based on the authors’ experience and the applications reviewed.

Suggested Citation

  • Roger Chapman Burk & Gregory S. Parnell, 2011. "Portfolio Decision Analysis: Lessons from Military Applications," International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, in: Ahti Salo & Jeffrey Keisler & Alec Morton (ed.), Portfolio Decision Analysis, chapter 0, pages 333-357, Springer.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:isochp:978-1-4419-9943-6_14
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-9943-6_14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kangaspunta, Jussi & Liesiö, Juuso & Salo, Ahti, 2012. "Cost-efficiency analysis of weapon system portfolios," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 223(1), pages 264-275.
    2. Gregory S. Parnell & Rudolph E. Butler & Stephen J. Wichmann & Mike Tedeschi & David Merritt, 2015. "Air Force Cyberspace Investment Analysis," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 81-95, June.
    3. Liesiö, Juuso & Salo, Ahti, 2012. "Scenario-based portfolio selection of investment projects with incomplete probability and utility information," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 217(1), pages 162-172.
    4. Kurth, Margaret & Keisler, Jeffrey M. & Bates, Matthew E. & Bridges, Todd S. & Summers, Jeffrey & Linkov, Igor, 2017. "A portfolio decision analysis approach to support energy research and development resource allocation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 128-135.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:isochp:978-1-4419-9943-6_14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.