Sustainable waste disposal technology selection: The stratified best-worst multi-criteria decision-making method

Abstract

Waste disposal technology selection is a key problem in the field of municipal solid waste (MSW). This decision may have long-term impacts on environmental development and economic growth. The literature suggests using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to address this problem. MCDM techniques commonly require decision makers to assign weightings of importance to the decision criteria based on which, the available technologies are ranked. However, this technology selection problem is concerned with selecting a technology to be used for a relatively long period of time. It is important to take into consideration any uncertainty the decision maker may have with regard to the weightings of the criteria in the future. To take this uncertainty into consideration, this study suggests utilizing a recently developed MCDM technique, namely the stratified MCDM. This technique is designed to help decision makers structure the uncertain future through the consideration of a set of states, which are placed in different strata. The paper shows how the stratified MCDM technique in combination with the best-worst method (labelled stratified BWM) can be employed to compute the ranking of the available technologies. This research is expected to stimulate future applications of the stratified BWM to facilitate long-term decision making.