Preparing Museum Disaster Plan: Risk Ranking Through the Analytical Hierarchy Process

Abstract

The object of this paper is to introduce a new approach for ranking risksin museums through the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The AHP provides a flexible and easily understood way to rank disaster risks in museums. It is a multi-criteria decision supporting methodology that allows subjective as well as objective factors to be considered in the process, which is precisely what is needed. AHP involves the principles of decomposition, pairwise comparisons, and priority vector generation and synthesis. Though the purpose of AHP is to capture the stackholders’ judgements about the situation in a museum, this approach also improves the stakeholders’ satisfaction through improved transparency in the ranking process and their increasing awareness of and participation in the process. One of the main advantages of this method is the relative ease with which it handles multiple criteria. In addition to this, AHP is easier to understand and it can effectively handle both qualitative and quantitative data. AHP will be discussed in more depth with the example of the risks rating of the Tartu City Museum’s (TCM) disaster plan.