Project Appraisal Methodology: A Multidimensional R&D Benefit/Cost Assessment Tool
介绍了一种多维、易用的研发项目评估工具PAM，用于评估研发项目的相对优劣。用户需估算能源效益、消费者节约和社会因素三组值。以美国能源部化石燃料利用局1981财年规划为例，展示了结果和敏感性分析，发现项目排名对生命周期成本、初始商业化年份和规划期最敏感。
Project Appraisal Methodology (PAM) is a multidimensional, easy to use tool for assessing the relative merits of R&D projects. It requires users to estimate three vectors of economic and scoring values: energy benefits, consumer savings and societal factors. The Division of Fossil Fuel Utilization, Department of Energy implemented PAM in support of their annual R&D planning, programming and budget preparation activities for FY 1981. Illustrative results, sensitivity analyses, and model parametrics are presented. Project rank is shown to be most sensitive to life cycle cost, year of initial commercialization, and planning horizon. Model weights, on the other hand, have little effect. Results also seem to indicate that the common formulation of the resource allocation optimization problem is not appropriate in a highly uncertain environment such as energy forecasting. Finally, several potential improvements to the methodology in the present application are discussed.