Abstract: Numerous projects of oil and natural gas (NG) supply chain are under construction worldwide for the establishment of new networks and facilities or for the extension of existing ones. From these projects, each one maintains its own design philosophy and technological concept. However, for managers and engineers, the selection of an optimum supply route demonstrates an essential techno-economical decision making problem associated with security of supply, environmental acceptance, investment cost and future networking. In practice, this problem is managed in pre-construction initiations, when feasibility and planning of projects are elaborated. This presentation considers a framework, under the form of an algorithmic procedure, for the evaluation of supply routes and decision-making. Problems of the framework, related with low availability of critical technical information and deficiencies of engineering companies to manage their corporate knowledge, are reported. A multicriteria analysis methodology, based on a Delphi technique for experts’ knowledge elicitation and quantification, is proposed as a practical solution to face the problems and to support the decision making process. A case study demonstrating applicability of the proposed methodology by using a fuzzy PROMETHEE version is also presented, examining several alternative solutions associated with the expansion of the inland natural gas supply chain in Greece. It is proved that the methodology suggested (i) allows elicitation and transforming of experts’ tacit knowledge to explicit (quantitative), by using questionnaires for scoring of criteria and alternative solutions, (ii) overcomes problems of experts’ unavailability through submission and recollection of questionnaires over long distances (by applying Delphi method techniques), (iii) reduces utilization of improper know-how from poorly maintained technical archives, (iv) enables less dependence on know-how and technology transfer collaborations, as mainly focused in utilizing captured tacit knowledge of experts; (v) anticipates limitation in economic and technological collaborations, since, at pre-construction phases, the budgets are limited and the time constraints pressing; (vi) allows incorporation of knowledge intensive criteria like know-how acquisition requirements and know-how diffusion perspectives.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Prof. Fragiskos Batzias holds a 5years Diploma and a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering, and a BSc in Economics. He has also studied Mathematics and Philosophy. He is Director of the Laboratory of Simulation of Industrial Processes and Head of the Research Group on Systems Analysis at the Department of Industrial Management and Technology of the University of Piraeus, Greece. He is teaching at the interdepartmental postgraduate courses (i) Systems of Energy Management and Protection of the Environment, running by the University of Piraeus in cooperation with the Chem. Eng. Dept. of the Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens, and (ii) Techno-Economic Systems, running by the Electr. & Comp. Eng. Dept. of the Nat. Tech. Univ. of Athens in cooperation with the University of Athens and the University of Piraeus. His research interests are in chemical engineering systems analysis and knowledge based decision making. He has >100 publications in highly ranked journals and conference proceedings, including 29 research monographs in collective volumes, with 171 citations and an h-index of 8 (for the period 2004-2011, source: ISI Web of Science, Thompson Scientific; self-citations have been excluded).

He has participated (and chaired after invitation from the organizers) in prestigious international conferences, such as those organized periodically by the IEEE, the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE), the DECHEMA, CHISA, WSEAS Organizations. He organizes the annual Symposium on Industrial and Environmental Case Studies running successfully since 2004 within the International Conference of Computational Methods in Sciences and Engineering (ICCMSE).