Developing an integrated social, economic, environmental, and technical analysis model for sustainable development using hybrid multi-criteria decision making methods

Abstract

Selecting an appropriate location for a large infrastructure project poses difficult situations. It shall satisfy sustainability indicators and establish harmony among multiple goals of multiple stakeholders. In such a situation, Multi-Criteria Decision Making techniques allow assessing qualitative and quantitative attributes, analysing and removing subjective biases and help in arriving at objective decisions. However, a single Multi-Criteria Decision Making technique may not be an effective tool to generate concrete results as there is no validation of the results. By utilising hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods, one can incorporate, gauge, and assess the range of social, economic, and environmental impacts precisely and achieve an accurate result by validating results by other methods. Therefore, this paper develops a model called as Social, Economic, Environmental and Technical Assessment model. It combines four fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making techniques viz. Fuzzy Stepwise Weighted Assessment Ratio Analysis, Fuzzy Multi-Objective Optimization by Ratio Analysis, Fuzzy Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment and Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution. This paper utilises the case of hydropower plants in India, how the policy and decision-makers can arrive at the selection of the best location for an infrastructure project. According to the assessment value, Teesta Low Dam IV (Darjeeling, West Bengal) isthe preferred hydropower plantfor all selected methods. The State could bring social justice, ecological stability; achieve economic benefits and sustainability by appropriating this proposed model in other development fields.