Priorities determination using novel analytic hierarchy process and median ranked sample set, case study of landfill siting criteria

Abstract

Integrating environmental, social, political, and economical attributes enhances the decision making process. Multi criteria decision making (MCDM) involves ambiguity and uncertainty due to various preferences. This study presents a model to minimize the uncertainty and ambiguity of human judgments by means of integrating the counter stakeholders with median ranked sample set (MRSS) and Analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The model uses landfill site selection as a MCDM problem. Sixteen experts belong to four clusters that are government, private, institution, and non-governmental organisations participated and their preferences were ranked in four by four matrix. Then the MRSS and the AHP were used to obtain the priorities of landfill siting criteria. Environmental criteria have the highest priority that equals to 48.1% and the distance from surface water, and the faults zones are the most important factors with priorities equal to 18% and 13.7% respectively. In conclusion, the hybrid approach that integrates counter stakeholders MRSS, and AHP is capable of being applied to complex decision making process and its outputs are justified.