Complex sensitivity analysis in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: An application to the selection of an electric car

Abstract

Sustainability research and practice decisions are the fields that address one of the most important challenges of today’s world, which is frugal resource management. More people are adopting ethical, less polluting lifestyles and, thus, are seeking out companies that share their values. Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is a suitable tool for comprehensively analyzing the available decision variants. However, the currently used frameworks are frequently based on crisp values, so the resulting ranking and ratings can only be regarded as initial recommendations. On the other hand, tools for solutions based on uncertain data are limited in practical usability, scalability, and flexibility for solutions based on uncertain data. In this paper, we propose a new comprehensive framework for sensitivity analysis based on interval arithmetic and the MCDA approach. The primary assessment gives initial recommendations, but only after thorough analysis can the ranking of alternatives be reliably treated. It means that thresholds for each criterion should be obtained, which informs us about the robustness of obtained alternative’s order. It is very important information that allows accepting or rejecting the ranking received. The framework’s performance is verified in sustainable development, where we evaluate the group of electric cars. The TOPSIS method for crisp and interval numbers is involved as the selected MCDA method. The results show that the proposed framework can be effectively used as a recommendation system for multi-criteria problems where input data can fluctuate.