Evaluation of sustainable energy systems in smart cities using a Multi-Expert Pythagorean fuzzy BWM & TOPSIS methodology

Abstract

Smart cities are technological settlements using the collected data to utilize resources and services effectively by combining information and communication technologies with various tools connected to the internet of things network. Sustainable energy systems in smart cities are systems can be evaluated by using multiple criteria decision making methods or methodologies based on several vague/imprecise evaluation criteria. In this paper, sustainable energy systems in smart cities are evaluated by interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy (IVPF) sets with an integrated optimization based multi-expert fuzzy Best Worst Method (BWM) and TOPSIS methodology that can better handle uncertainty and vagueness in experts’ linguistic assessments than existing methodologies. The considered criteria are weighted by multi-expert IVPF Best Worst Method, which has become a popular weighting method in recent years. Later, the energy alternatives for a real case study are prioritized by multi-expert IVPF TOPSIS method. In the analysis, the most important criterion is found as Environmental sustainability (C1) with the defuzzified weight of 0.218 while the other weights are as initial investment (C2) with 0.196, operating expenses (C3) with 0.163, technical feasibility (C4) with 0.154, social acceptability (C5) with 0.140, and scalability (C6) with 0.129. The obtained results indicate that “Investing in advanced technologies” in a smart city with relative degree of closeness (RDC) value of 0.798, has been determined as the best alternative among the considered five alternatives. It is closely followed by “Developing a transportation system” with the RDC value of 0.681. Sensitivity analysis shows that the ranking results are quite robust and reliable. The comparative analysis with crisp BWM and TOPSIS methodology is applied to check the validity of the proposed methodology.