Multi-criteria Decision-making Tool Research Articles

Interactive Internet-based Tool Proposal for the WASPAS method: a contribution for decision-making process

This paper presents the findings of the waspasWEB Project, which endeavors to furnish decision makers with a readily accessible mechanism for employing the "Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS)" method. The project's societal contribution encompasses the development of a user-friendly, publicly accessible internet tool, as well as a package released on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) to cater to the R language user community. The WASPAS method represents a relatively novel approach that has garnered recognition in both scholarly literature and the commercial domain. The utilization of Operations Research methodologies is crucial in justifying decisions, and this endeavor strives to advance the adoption of such methodologies by offering managers, researchers, and the general public an intuitive and easily approachable multicriteria decision-making tool.

Optimization of surgical selection in the treatment of irritation fibroids

Irritation fibroma is a benign, non-neoplastic lesion that arises in the oral mucosa due to chronic irritations or trauma. This focal hyperplasia of collagenized fibrous connective tissue typically presents as an exophytic, firm, asymptomatic, pink nodule with a smooth surface and a well-defined border. Removing this lesion not only allows for diagnostic confirmation, it also prevents additional complications, relieves symptoms in symptomatic cases, and improves the patient's aesthetics and comfort. Surgical intervention is the recommended treatment and can be carried out using various techniques, such as conventional surgical excision, laser surgery, electrosurgery and cryosurgery. The choice of surgical method is based on specific characteristics of the fibroid and physician preferences, with conventional surgical excision frequently preferred as it allows complete control over tissue removal. This study details the case of a patient with an irritation fibroma located in the lateral region of the tongue, for which the VIKOR method was used as a multi-criteria decision-making tool to select the most appropriate surgical technique. The final decision favored conventional surgical excision, based on multicriteria assessment that included aspects such as the size and location of the lesion, available resources, risks, and aesthetic results. The management of irritation fibroma must be careful and well-founded, favoring techniques that ensure complete removal of the lesion with minimal complications and ensuring adequate postoperative follow-up to evaluate the patient's evolution and prevent recurrences

A Novel Combination Scheme of the Modified TOPSIS and ITARA in Housing Assistance and Building Assessments

Disasters chatter properties and fragilize their safety and sustainability. Whether man-made or natural hazards, they render the buildings’ habitability, functionality, and operationality inappropriate. Thus, stakeholders directly assess the damages and plan for adequate and accurate housing support of the surveyed blocks. These plans and strategies cope with the complexity of the occurring problems and highlight the support priorities and their types for a set of damaged buildings. Therefore, combining multi-criteria decision-making tools and implementing their techniques in defining suitable measures is of paramount necessity. This paper presents a modified approach for the combination of ITARA and TOPSIS while coping with the RRP and standardizing approaches. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed combination scheme is a novel approach to categorizing distressed buildings regarding their required assistance, priorities, rank reversal problem, threshold criteria, and alternatives.

Evaluation of Covid-19 Pandemic in OECD Countries by Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods

Amaç: OECD ülkelerinin Covid-19 performanslarına ilişkin kantitatif bir değerlendirme sunma hedefi ile yola çıkılmış, belirlenen parametreler doğrultusunda ülkelerin göreceli bir değerlendirmesini sunmak amaçlanmıştır. 
 Yöntem: Bu amaç doğrultusunda, çok kriterli karar verme (ÇKKV) yöntemlerinden ENTROPI, ARAS ve TOPSIS kullanılmıştır. OECD ülkeleri çalışmanın evrenini oluşturmaktadır. Hollanda, hekim ve hemşire sayılarına ulaşılamadığından, Kosta Rika ise, 25 Mayıs 2021 tarihinde OECD üyesi olduğundan değerlendirme dışı kalmıştır. Çalışma 36 ülke ile gerçekleştirilmiştir. Belirlenen 8 değerlendirme kriteri, Covid-19 pandemisine ilişkin verilerden ve ülkelerin sağlık göstergelerinden oluşmaktadır. Kriterlere ilişkin değerler internet sitelerinden 02.04.2021 tarihinde elde edilmiştir. Verilerin analizinde Excel Programı kullanılmıştır. 
 Bulgular: ENTROPI yöntemiyle kriter önem ağırlıklarının belirlenmesi sonucunda, en az bir doz Covid-19 aşılama oranı (%), 1.000.000 nüfus başına Covid-19 ölüm sayısı, kişi başı cari sağlık harcaması ($), 1.000.000 nüfus başına Covid-19 vaka sayısı ve 1.000 kişiye düşen hastane yatağı sayısı kriterlerinin ilk beş sırada yer aldığı bulunmuştur. ARAS yöntemi sonucunda elde edilen sıralamada ABD, Birleşik Krallık ve İsrail; TOPSIS yöntemi sonucunda elde edilen sıralamada İsrail, Norveç ve Birleşik Krallık üst sıralarda yer almıştır. 
 Sonuç ve Öneriler: Covid-19 pandemi süreci her ne kadar olumsuz olsa da, sağlık sistemleri ve toplumlar için öğretici olmuş, yetersiz kalan alanlarda iyileştirme yapılması ve yeni stratejiler geliştirilmesi gerekliliğini ortaya koymuştur. Covid-19 pandemisi sonrası ülkelerin; sağlık sistemlerinde iyileştirmeler yapmaya, bozulan ekonomilerini yeniden inşa etmeye, gelecekte yaşanabilecek olası salgınlara, krizlere ve evrensel çapta değişikliğe neden olabilecek olaylara hazırlanmaya odaklanmaları önerilebilir.

Multicriteria assessment of landscape architecture projects: the sustainability perspective

Cities are implementing numerous projects for improving their urban landscapes. The quality of planned landscape interventions is critical for the users and that depends on proper assessment of the projects. After theoretical and empirical research, the paper proposes the framework for quality assessment of landscape architecture projects in relation to sustainability principles. By using the set of pre-determined criteria and relevant indicators the paper offers triple-level multicriteria decision-making tool for assessing the projects aiming at refurbishing, regenerating or conserving the existing parks and gardens, urban open spaces, cultural landscapes and urban infrastructure landscapes by the professional experts. The results of assessing the urban open space refurbishment projects have demonstrated that the proposed solution is fit for setting the participatory quality assessment platform with involvement of stakeholders for comparing the proposals, identifying theiradvances and shortages, also figuring out the dominating design trends. The results suggest that each phase of project development has a significant impact on the quality of the process and the overall assessment result.Authors and clients should pay special attention to landscape perception values.

MULTI-CRITERIA EVALUATION OF INNOVATIVE PROJECTS BY MEANS OF ELECTRE APPLICATION

The purpose of this article is to study the possibilities of using multi-criteria decision-making tools (MCDM), a separate method of multi-criteria analysis (MCA), to evaluate and rank a set of innovative projects that come to innovation development programs, microorganisms. To assess the relative effectiveness of the implementation of innovative projects of the enterprise using the method of the ELECTRE family, namely – ELECTRE-I. The study demonstrated the effectiveness of using ELECTRE-analysis to evaluate innovative projects within the program of innovative development of the enterprise,taking into account performance (benefit factor), time (cost factor) and resources (cost factor). The study concerned a specific machine-building enterprise to prove the possibility of implementing the ELECTRE method and obtain clear results while expanding the input analytical information in the model by including data from other enterprises of the machine-building industry of Ukraine, which will be the subject of our further research. To build a weighted normalized matrix in the framework of ELECTRE-analysis used weights obtained by interviewing managers of innovative projects of the enterprise, which suggests the presence of a certain level of subjectivity in the assessment. The article is designed to close the gaps in the lack of practical experience in using the tools of multi-criteria analysis to establish the relative effectiveness of the implementation of a set of projects in the program of innovative development of Ukrainian enterprises.

A systematic review of the application of multi-criteria decision-making in evaluating Nationally Determined Contribution projects

Analyses in the past decade and more recently, catastrophic events, including extreme temperatures, unpredictable weather patterns, floods, and wildfires caused by climate change, have become too common worldwide. There is overwhelming evidence that country commitments expressed in National Determined Contributions (NDCs) can contribute to stabilising or reversing the course of impacts of climate change. With the multiplicity of NDC measures, compounded by their complexities and limited resources, multi-criteria decision-making tools can be used in making informed decisions about their development. Furthermore, while many countries are blessed with an abundance of sustainable resources and technologies to feed into NDCs, a major challenge is prioritising them as part of the national and global climate change mitigation and adaptation agenda. Many multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods and tools have been developed over the years. However, their implementation in practice for prioritising NDC measures is still not well-known despite their high acceptance in academic literature. This study adopts a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature from the Web of Science and grey literature from the recently launched Technology Needs Assessment database to fully understand the MCDM tools used in evaluating NDC projects from academic versus practice perspectives. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) method adopted, culminated in the identification of 464 peer-reviewed journal articles and 50 TNA reports used in the analysis. The results indicate amongst the many MCDM techniques in peer-reviewed literature, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is the most widely used in research, while simplified MCDM methods are the most used in practice.

A multicriteria decision-making method for additive manufacturing process selection

Purpose Because of the significant differences in the features and requirements of specific products and the capabilities of various additive manufacturing (AM) solutions, selecting the most appropriate AM technology can be challenging. This study aims to propose a method to solve the complex process selection in 3D printing applications, especially by creating a new multicriteria decision-making tool that takes the direct certainty of each comparison to reflect the decision-maker’s desire effectively. Design/methodology/approach The methodology proposed includes five steps: defining the AM technology selection decision criteria and constraints, extracting available AM parameters from the database, evaluating the selected AM technology parameters based on the proposed decision-making methodology, improving the accuracy of the decision by adopting newly proposed weighting scheme and selecting optimal AM technologies by integrating information gathered from the whole decision-making process. Findings To demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed methodology, this case study describes a detailed industrial application in rapid investment casting that applies the weightings to a tailored AM technologies and materials database to determine the most suitable AM process. The results showed that the proposed methodology could solve complicated AM process selection problems at both the design and manufacturing stages. Originality/value This research proposes a unique multicriteria decision-making solution, which employs an exclusive weightings calculation algorithm that converts the decision-maker's subjective priority of the involved criteria into comparable values. The proposed framework can reduce decision-maker's comparison duty and potentially reduce errors in the pairwise comparisons used in other decision-making methodologies.

Havaalanlarında Dijital Dönüşüm Risklerinin Değerlendirilmesi

Son zamanlarda ivme kazanmaya başlayan ve fiziksel sistemin sanal bir kopyasını oluşturmakla ilgili olan sistemler dijital dönüşüm olarak adlandırılmaktadır. Dijital dönüşüm verimliliği etkileyen ve rekabet avantajı oluşturan bir kavram haline gelmiştir. Tüm sektörlerde olduğu gibi havacılık sektöründe de rekabetin giderek artmasıyla dijitalleşmenin önemi giderek artmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, havaalanlarında kullanılan dijital dönüşüm unsurları incelenmiş ve bu süreci etkileyen riskler çok kriterli karar verme araçlarından olan analitik ağ prosesi yöntemi ile incelenmiştir. Karşılaşılan sorunlar ve nedenleri balık kılçığı diyagramı ile ortaya konmuş daha sonra ortaya çıkan kriterler analitik ağ prosesi yöntemi ile önem derecelerine göre sıralanıp değerlendirilmiştir. Değerlendirmeler neticesinde multidisipliner bir çalışma ortamının oluşturulmasının havalimanlarındaki dijital dönüşümde büyük öneme sahip olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır.

A causal structure-based multiple-criteria decision framework for evaluating the water-related ecosystem service tradeoffs in a desert oasis region

Study regionQira oasis, a typical catchment alluvial fan composed by agriculture and natural shrubs at the south margin of Taklimakan Desert, China Study focusWater management modeling involves causal interaction effects of various water-related ecosystem services (ESs) under multiple-criteria water management alternatives, measuring expected benefits of water-related ESs. Many multi-criteria decision tools have been developed to mitigate some of major challenges of ESs tradeoffs. However, few formal ES trade-off frameworks have focused on the multiple-criteria alternatives assessment and indifference point identifications of water-related ES. This paper proposes a causal structure-based multiple-criteria decision framework to model water-related ESs, and to detect the points where the decision makers would be indifferent between two alternatives and to compare with the optimum recommendation value using Bayesian networks (BNs) with analytic hierarchy process (AHP). New hydrological insights for the regionThe study confirms that the proposed causal structure-based multiple-criteria decision framework is a promising approach to modeling possible climate, irrigation, and water policy scenarios and to examining influences of those scenarios on water-related ESs. The framework can be used to effectively recommend optimum water management alternatives and to identify the indifference points by combining BNs into AHP under stakeholder participation. The framework also provides a qualitative and quantitative assessment to reduce the conflicts and uncertainties of multiple-criteria weights in diagnosing water-related ES trade-offs, owing to different stakeholder preferences.

Multi-criteria decision making for a holistic assessment of sustainable alternatives in SWRO desalination: A case study

Water authorities have been constructing an increasing number of small-scale desalination treatment plants to provide drinking water for remotely located communities. Each location has a different situational context and community priorities, meaning that the treatment solutions should be selected considering a range of criteria and sub-criteria covering technical, economic, environmental, and health aspects. In this study, a comparison of three possible desalination alternatives was made using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool in a rural area of Queensland, Australia. The studied alternatives encompassed standalone reverse osmosis (RO); forward osmosis (FO) coupled with RO (FO–RO), and ultrafiltration coupled with RO (UF–RO). The hybrid alternatives have the potential to significantly reduce energy consumption and environmental impact and to increase the efficiency of pathogenic removal and contaminations. The weights for the criteria were developed by integrating a multi-criteria feasibility assessment with a new survey that was responded by SWRO experts. Following this, the desalination alternatives were ranked using the TOPSIS method (technique for ordering preference by similarity to ideal solutions). A sensitivity analysis was conducted to see how the results would vary by changing the weights of preferences. The resulting MCDM framework ranked the UF-RO hybrid system as the best performing alternative with consistently high efficiency levels for stakeholders. The results showed that the performances of the FO-RO hybrid system and of the RO standalone system were similar, with FO-RO showing a marginal superiority in most of criteria.

Development of entropy embedded COPRAS-ARAS hybrid MCDM model for optimizing EDM parameters while machining high carbon chromium steel plate

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the optimization of electrical discharge machining (EDM) parameters in a green production environment. The primary goal of this work is to create a novel hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model that combines COPRAS and ARAS to determine the best input EDM parameters for machining high carbon chromium tool steel plate. To carry out the selection process, a total of nine tests were carried out using four input parameters, including dielectric level, peak current, flushing pressure, and pulse duration at three different levels of magnitude, and the readings of the respective five output parameters were measured. The weights of these five criterions are evaluated using entropy, while COPRAS-ARAS hybrid model is implemented to choose the best alternative experiment among these nine availabilities. Experiment 5 is found to be the best choice, with the machining parameters 261 µs pulse length, 0.3 kg/cm2 flushing pressure, 4.5 Å current, and 80 mm dielectric level being the optimal input values. The primary result demonstrates that the developed hybrid model is sufficiently accurate and provides the best choice when compared to six existing MCDM tools. Finally, sensitivity analysis is used to justify the hybrid model’s stability and consistency.

Electric vehicles development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Performance assessment of standalone renewable energy systems for hydrogen refuelling and electricity charging stations (HRECS)

One of the main setbacks to electric vehicles (EVs) adoption relates to the unavailability of the required charging stations across a jurisdiction. In addition, drawing the required energy of the EVs from a fossil fuel-dominated grid does not only minimize the cleaner benefits of EVs but also puts enormous pressure on an already stressed grid network in electricity-deficient regions like Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Hence, in the current study, six different 100% hybrid renewable energy systems based on powerplants of solar, wind, and biomass have been proposed for meeting the energy needs of 70 and 30 battery and fuel cell electric vehicles, respectively using Ghana as a case study. With the aid of HOMER Pro software and multicriteria decision-making tools, the hybrid system, biogas generator-photovoltaic emerged as the most feasible of the six proposed solutions from a technical, economic, and environmental standpoint. This winning system produces 3.9 GWh/yr and 55.6 tonnes/yr of electricity and hydrogen, respectively. The NPC, LCOE, LCOH, and payback period was recorded as $6.53 million, $0.52/kWh, $9.09/kg and ∼8 years, respectively. Approximately, 4 tonnes of GHG emissions are produced by the HRECS each year, and the amount of CO2 emissions avoided from replacing 100 gasoline vehicles with the proposed EVs has been obtained as 460 tons/yr. With the aid of sensitivity analysis, it became apparent that the feasibility of the proposed systems could improve with improvement in components' efficiencies and lifetime, and reduction in unit costs. The current work has several contributions to the sustainable development goals (7, 8, 11, 13), and could aid in accelerating EV penetration in SSA.

Selection of Suitable Dosage Form in the Treatment and Management for Onychomycosis by Implementing Analytical Hierarchy Process

Onychomycosis is a significant nail disorder due to fungal infection, that causes damage to the finger or toenails. The infection involves the invasion of fungi into nail components like nail matrix, nail bed and nail plate. So the management of onychomycosis is necessary as it causes a negative impact on patients quality of life. The consequences of the disease include pain and disfigurement which in turn leads to burning, vesicle formation or stinging around the nails. The selection of topical treatment methods is a challenge for the dermatologist to achieve effective management of onychomycosis. The study aimed to benefit the dermatologist to select the best dosage form for the treatment by using the Analytical Hierarchy Process -a multicriteria decision-making tool. The various dosage forms available are for the Transungual route includes Nail lacquer, Nail patches, colloidal carriers, Nanoemulsions, Nanoparticles, Liposomes, Microemulsions, Hydrogels/In situ gels. The parameters that help to achieve the reproducibility and consistency for treatment are Drug permeation, Drug distribution, Treatment methods, Therapeutic efficacy, Patient compliance, Treatment strategy. So, it is necessary to incorporate all the factors that influence the dosage form selection in the decision-making process. Due to the side effects of oral antifungal therapies, the various transungual dosage form alternatives selected for the study are Nail patches, Nail lacquers, Nanoemulsions, Microemulsions and in-situ hydrogels. The ultimate ranking of the alternative is based on the composite score. These findings will enable the dermatologist to develop an adequate treatment strategy for the proper management of onychomycosis to improve the quality of life in patients.

The Perspective Projects Promoting Sustainable Mobility by Active Travel to School on the Example of the Southern Poland Region

The paper presents a discussion concerning the development of projects regarding active travel with the policy of sustainable mobility, with active school transport in southern Poland being taken into special consideration. The implementation of the idea of sustainable school travel planning involves linking several social groups, including traffic planners and organizers, school administrators, governments, parents, and children. This, in turn, requires considering the criteria reported by all parties when choosing a scenario for the region’s development in terms of transport solutions. The following study was based on the methodological foundations of multicriteria decision-making analysis. The research purpose of this paper is to identify and classify the actions, policies, and scenarios of active travel projects for the sustainable development of mobility based on the cities of southern Poland. The evaluation was carried out through expert methods with multicriteria decision-making tools based on the MULTIPOL (MULTI-criteria and POLicy) prospective analysis technique. It allowed for the selection of the most probable policy, which covered the six actions considered by the experts to be the most significant for the development of the active school transport system in the analyzed region. Such actions are as follows: identification of walking school bus routes, modernization of crosswalk lines, planning of walking and cycling routes to schools, promoting safety educational programs, distribution of active school transport booklets and cycling, and pedestrian skills training workshops. The paper presents a new method to evaluate the policies and actions regarding promoting sustainable (active) travel to school. The innovative approach results from assembling a mixed group of people (stakeholders) as experts. The mix of experts consisting of users (pupils and parents), practitioners, and scientist experts in this field allowed us to score policies, actions, and scenarios, enabling a wider spectrum of assessment than before.

A’WOT analysis for sustaınability of biodiversity and tourism in Shahdagh Natıonal Park, Azerbaijan


 
 
 Shahdag National Park is the largest protected area in Azerbaijan, as well as in the South Caucasus. The article examines the sustainable development of tourism and biodiversity in the national park and surrounding areas. For this purpose, SWOT analysis was conducted using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tools to implement planning. The study identified internal and external environmental factors influencing the national park and presented specific strategies for sustainability. Interviews and surveys were conducted with the management of the national park, as well as visitors, to identify the factors affecting the development of the park. During the analysis of the survey results, factors affecting biodiversity and tourism were taken into account, such as ecological sustainability, economic efficiency, and social responsibility, which are key indicators of sustainable development. Thus, the initial SWOT analysis identified the strengths and weaknesses of the park as internal factors, as well as the opportunities and challenges related to external factors. For each category, 5 factors were selected according to their importance and evaluated in terms of effectiveness by establishing a hierarchy. Based on the assessment, local and global weights of factors were calculated. Mountain ecosystems and the biodiversity of the national park received the highest rating value as an internal factor. Among the external factors, reducing the impact on ecosystems and opportunities to increase tourism revenues received a high score for its effectiveness. For the sustainable development of the research area, factors covering various aspects of society and the environment were comprehensively analyzed, and strategies were proposed that incorporate more scientifically effective and systematic attributes. The results showed that the main condition is to increase the protection regime of ecosystems identified as a priority in the national park and to raise public awareness of environmental issues. In addition, the use of the park’s tourism potential by local communities and the creation of stimulating business opportunities for entrepreneurs can make a positive contribution to sustainable development at the regional level.
 
 

Influence of chemical structure of organic micropollutants on the degradability with ozonation

The increasing environmental problems due to various organic micropollutants in water cause the search of suitable additional water treatment methods. Gaining experimental data for the large amount and variety of pollutants would consume a lot of time as well as economic and ecologic resources. An alternative approach is predictive quantitative structure-property relationship (QSPR) modeling, which establishes a correlation between the structural properties of a molecules with a biological, physical, or chemical property. Therefore, in this study, QSPR modeling has been conducted using extensive validation techniques and statistical test to investigate the structural influence on the degradability of organic micropollutants with ozonation. In contrast to most of the other studies, the underlying dataset - rate constants for 92 organic molecules - were obtained under standardized conditions with defined experimental parameters. QSPR modeling was executed using a combination of the software PaDEL for descriptor calculation and QSARINS for the modeling process respecting all five OECD-requirements for applicable QSAR/QSPR-models. The final model was selected using a multi-criteria decision-making tool to evaluate the model quality based on all calculated statistical quality parameters. The model included 10 selected descriptors and fingerprints and showed good regression abilities, predictive power, and stability (R² = 0.8221, CCCtr = 0.9024, Q²loo = 0.7436, R²ext = 0.8420, Q²F1 = 0.8104). The applicability domain of the QSPR model was defined and an interpretation of selected model descriptors has been connected to previous experimental studies. A significant influence of the interpretable descriptors was put into experimental context and compared with previous studies and models. For example, the molar refractivity as a measure of size and polarizability of a molecule and the occurrence of important substructures such as a formamide group seem to decrease the removal rate constant. The contribution of lone electrons entering into resonance as well as the occurrence of fused rings were identified as influences for the increase of the degradability of micropollutants by ozonation.

Constructing a framework for selecting natural fibres as reinforcements composites based on grey relational analysis

Abstract Material selection is crucial in product development, especially when material from a composites process application is involved. Numerous multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tools each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. Using grey relational analysis (GRA), this research proposes a systematic framework evaluation approach for generating a sensible rank for material selection of natural fibre as reinforcement composites. The framework was created using the GRA technique, a robust evaluation tool that employs the grade of relation to determine the degree of similarity or difference between two sequences. The MCDM approach can be straightforward for the material selection problem. A GRA technique is used to investigate the performance of the potential material, which includes grey relational sequence creation, reference sequence definition, grey relational coefficient calculation and grey relational grade determination. This framework is applied with a case study to identify the optimum natural fibres composites material for a bike helmet. End results revealed that pineapple is the best candidate for construction of safety gear (cyclist helmet). The best possible evaluation model for material selection of the composite can be referred by design engineer in composite industry for multiple applications. Moreover, the proposed framework is an aid to help engineers and designers to choose most suitable material.

The use of an analytic hierarchy process to promote equity, diversity and inclusion.

SummaryEquity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are increasingly important directives in medicine that add further complexity to adjudications. The analytic hierarchy process is proposed as a tool for multicriteria decision-making that can facilitate the incorporation of EDI directives, especially for collective, group determinations.

Mapping Heat Wave Hazard in Urban Areas: A Novel Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach

Global population is experiencing more frequent, longer, and more severe heat waves due to global warming and urbanization. Episodic heat waves increase mortality and morbidity rates and demands for water and energy. Urban managers typically assess heat wave risk based on heat wave hazard, population exposure, and vulnerability, with a general assumption of spatial uniformity of heat wave hazard. We present a novel analysis that demonstrates an approach to determine the spatial distribution of a set of heat wave properties and hazard. The analysis is based on the Livneh dataset at a 1/16-degree resolution from 1950 to 2009 in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA. We then focused on neighborhoods with the most frequent, severe, earlier, and extended periods of heat wave occurrences. On average, the first heat wave occurs 40 days earlier in the eastern part of the county; the northeast part of this region experiences 12 days further extreme hot days and 30 days longer heat wave season than other regions of the area. Then, we applied a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) tool (TOPSIS) to evaluate the total hazard posed by heat wave components. We found that the northern and central parts of the metropolitan area are subject to the greatest heat wave hazard and that individual heat wave hazard components did not necessarily indicate heat hazard. This approach is intended to support local government planning for heat wave adaptation and mitigation strategies, where cooling centers, heat emergency water distribution networks, and electrical energy delivery can be targeted based on current and projected local heat wave characteristics.