A multicriteria analysis approach for evaluating the sustainability performance of hydropower projects under hesitant fuzzy environment

Abstract

Hydropower is recognized as one of the most important clean and renewable energy choices which fuel the overall societal development by contributing a notable proportion of sustainable energy to the whole global power generation. Although much attention has been paid to the development of hydropower plants, few of them attempted to study the sustainability performance of the available hydropower project alternatives for achieving an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable manner. This paper develops a multicriteria analysis approach for evaluating the performance of hydropower projects under hesitant fuzzy environment. Hesitant fuzzy set is used to deal with the conditions where the decision maker hesitates among several values to assess the alternatives. An effective algorithm is developed for generating a performance index for every hydropower project alternative across all evaluation criteria. An example case is presented to demonstrate the application of the developed approach for dealing with a hydropower evaluation and selection problem.