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6.11 RELEVANCE TREE

Method Id: 11 Method name: Relevance tree

Type of method: Qualitative

Type of Input: A starting point is a specific problem space

Type of output: A hierarchical structure, where a specific problem space is divided into sub-

constructs/sub-units in a way that they describe a problem space completely, but they

arent overlap each other.

FOCUS Suitability

Best practices. The method can be used to study alternative roles of EU same time recognising special

characteristics of different stakeholders. Relevance tree enables to identify relevant stakeholders, their

interdependencies and specific characteristics in relation to big five themes and their subtopics e.g.

how critical they are as suppliers (e.g. food, pharmaceutics or energy supplier),

what kind of special obligations they have (e.g. based on the law and regulations in specific memberstates or in countries outside Europe),

how vulnerable they are against specific kind of risks (energy disruptions, supply chain breach etc.)

do they have special constrains (e.g. capacity or financial constrains)

etc.

Additionally, relevance trees can be used as a tool to describe e.g. components of critical infrastructure,

different supply chain layers, and threat and crime types.

Stakeholders can be seen at least from three perspectives. They can be seen as objects of EUs law

making (e.g. compulsory or voluntary supply chain security programs), vulnerable units (e.g. in a case of

natural catastrophes, industrial accidents) or primary security providers to EU citizens; EUs role is to

provide prerequisites (authority, known operator etc.) and / or resources (material, fuel, energy etc.) in

order that stakeholders can e.g. maintain logistics infrastructure and information systems and provide

logistics operations in a case if emergency. Stakeholders can be studied in current and potential situations.

Morphological analysis can be used as a complementary technique to generate different scenarios.

Inconveniences. There are no specific inconveniences that would make the method not suitable to

FOCUS.

Cost and time requirements. The method requires no specific tools. Work can be conducted by means of

workshops, desktop work and other expert methods. Time required is not easily definable, recursiveprocess.

Required adaptations

N/A

Conclusions

Relevance tree is a good method for structuring problems and then obtain a model out of it.

It may be suitable for all themes in the modelling phase.

Suitable phase(s) in FOCUS methodology: II Modelling

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Suitable Theme(s) WP3 CA X WP4 ND&GEC X WP5 CI&SCP X WP6 PT X WP7 EUIF X