Number Of Decision Criteria Research Articles

Fuzzy Einstein-based decision-making model for the evaluation of site selection criteria of floating photovoltaic system

The site selection step is one of the milestones required to ensure the success of a renewable energy project. The present study proposes a novel framework for the suitable site selection of floating photovoltaic (FPV) systems by applying a robust Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) method. A comprehensive literature review was performed to identify the exclusion and decision criteria. A questionnaire was prepared, and 30 experts from academia, industry, and non-governmental organizations answered it. The Fuzzy Einstein-based Logarithmic Additive Estimation of Weight Coefficients (LAAW) model was applied to assess the expert estimates and to determine the weights of 4 main and 41 sub-criteria. Based on the fuzzy model results, the main criteria were ranked in the following order of importance: economical, technical, environmental, and social and regulations. Although the number of decision criteria and the MCDM method significantly differ, the results of the present study are consistent with the findings of previous studies in the literature.

Comparison of Judgment Scales of the Analytical Hierarchy Process — A New Approach

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) remains a popular multi-criteria decision method. One topic under discussion of AHP is the use of different scales to translate judgments into ratios. The author makes a new approach to compare different scale functions and to derive a recommendation for the application of scales. The approach is based on simple analytic functions and takes into consideration the number of criteria of the decision problem. A generalization of the so-called balanced scale is proposed, and a new adaptive-balanced scale is introduced. Scales are then categorized and compared based on weight boundaries and weight ratios, weight uncertainties, weight dispersion and number of decision criteria. Finally, a practical example of a decision hierarchy is presented applying the different scales. The results show that the generalized balanced scale improves weight dispersion and weight uncertainty in comparison to the fundamental AHP scale. The proposed adaptive-balanced scale overcomes the problem of a change of the maximum weight depending on the number of decision criteria.

Improving spatial decision making using interactive maps: An empirical study on interface complexity and decision complexity in the North American hazardous waste trade

Spatial decisions increasingly are made by both professional and citizen stakeholders using interactive maps, yet few empirically-derived guidelines exist for designing interactive maps that support complex reasoning and decision making across problem contexts. We address this gap through an online map study with 122 participants with varying expertise. The study required participants to assume two hypothetical scenarios in the North American hazardous waste trade, review geographic information on environmental justice impacts using a different interactive map for each scenario, and arrive at an optimal decision outcome. This study followed a 2 × 2 factorial design, varying interface complexity (the number of supported interaction operators) and decision complexity (the number of decision criteria) as the independent variables and controlling for participant expertise with the hazardous waste trade and other aspects of cartographic design. Our findings indicate that interface complexity, not decision complexity, influenced decision outcomes, with participants arriving at better decisions using the simpler interface. However, expertise was a moderating effect, with experts and non-experts using different interaction strategies to arrive at their decisions. The research contributes to cartography, geovisualization, spatial decision science, urban planning, and visual analytics as well as to scholarship on environmental justice, the geography of hazardous waste, and participatory mapping.

Model for Industrial Site Selection towards a More Sustainable Dammam Metropolitan Area: Experts-Based Analytic Hierarchy Process

Industrial site selection is the process of choosing the most suitable location(s) that meets the desired requirements set by the selection criteria. Siting an industry is a major long-term investment. In this sense, selection of the most suitable location is imperative in satisfying the social, economic, environmental, and sustainability requirements. Identifying the most suitable site(s) with desired requirements defined by the selection criteria is basically one of the key objectives of industrial site selection. The majority of the data used by managers and decision makers in industrial site selection are geographically related, which denotes the industrial site selection process to be a spatial decision issue. Therefore, this study employed Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model to evaluate the location suitability of the existing industries Dammam Metropolitan Area (DMA) based on a number of decision criteria used in selecting the most suitable industrial sites. Priority weights were calculated after ranking each criterion using the Saaty’s 9 point scale of preference by the experts. Weights were calculated and further normalized through the AHP. The findings of the survey have been used to evaluate the existing and approved industrial sites in DMA. The study have reached an important conclusion and recommendations with regards to the existing and approved industrial sites in DMA.

Prioritizing alternatives in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) using VIKOR method with random sampling for data gaps

This study suggests a framework to prioritize the plans in strategic environmental assessment (SEA) with incomplete information. The Monte Carlo method for the data gaps in SEA and the VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method, which is a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) method, are used. The VIKOR method is used to prioritize the plans based on a number of decision criteria because its decision philosophies, considering both the utility and regret of performance measures in MCDA, support the main objective of SEA, which is to minimize potential negative impacts and maximize potential positive impacts of plans. In this study, the proposed framework is applied to the SEA that is part of the long-term plan for dam construction in Korea. This study quantifies the environmental feasibility scores of ten alternative dam construction sites based on multiple criteria, including landscape and geology, ecological value, water quality, and environmental toxicity, and generates sets of random numbers to fill the gaps resulting from the incomplete data. By varying the importance between the regret and utility of performance measures, the rankings of feasible sites are quantified with the uncertainty bounds from the randomly generated numbers. We find that the resulting ranks among the sites can vary significantly according to the decision philosophy of stakeholders. Our results imply that the proposed framework can be utilized to provide quantitative information for decision making in SEA, considering various decision criteria pertaining to environmental aspects, uncertainty of incomplete data, and decision flexibility according to decision-makers’ tendency.

Consulting stakeholders when selecting a structural form

The authors have constructed a model for choosing between ten structural steel and concrete forms for an office block on the basis of a number of decision criteria, including cost, initial embodied energy, frame construction time and overall construction time. A multi-criteria decision model was utilised within this analysis, resulting in a ranking from 1 to 10 of the different structural options. A centrally important part of the modelling process was the assignment of importance weightings by different stakeholders to the four criteria, with these weightings then input directly into the multi-criteria decision model. Stakeholders were divided into different groupings with potentially significant inputs into the planning/design/construction process, including engineers, architects, planners, contractors and developers. The decision model was then run using each set of weightings derived from the weighting preferences of the different groupings. This paper outlines the method used to derive the weightings, analyses the effect the different weighting inputs have on the rankings of the ten structural options examined, and thus demonstrates how the views of the various stakeholders in this decision-making process regarding the choice of an optimal structural form can be accommodated using a weighted multi-criteria decision model.

A monocular system for person tracking: Implementation and testing

This paper presents a complete functional system capable of detecting people and tracking their motion in either live camera feed or pre-recorded video sequences. The system consists of two main modules, namely the detection and tracking modules. Automatic detection aims at locating human faces and is based on fusion of color and feature-based information. Thus, it is capable of handling faces in different orientations and poses (frontal, profile, intermediate). To avoid false detections, a number of decision criteria are employed. Tracking is performed using a variant of the well-known Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi tracker, while occlusion is handled through a re-detection stage. Manual intervention is allowed to assist both modules if required. In manual mode, the system can track any object of interest, so long as there are enough features to track. The system caters for calibrated cameras and can provide 3-D coordinates of any tracked object(s) of interest. It has been tested with very good results on a variety of video sequences, including a database of studio video sequences, for which 3-D ground truth data, originating from a 4-camera infrared tracking system, exist.

Outranking methods as tools in strategic natural resources planning

Two outranking methods, ELECTRE III and PROMETHEE II, commonly used as decision-aid in various environmental problems, and their applications to decision support for natural resources management are presented. These methods represent ‘the European school’ of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), as opposed to ‘the American school’, represented by, for instance, the AHP method. On the basis of a case study, outranking methods are compared to so far more usually applied techniques based on the ideas of multi attribute utility theory (MAUT). The outranking methods have been recommended for situations where there is a finite number of discrete alternatives to be chosen among. The number of decision criteria and decision makers may be large. An important advantage of outranking methods, when compared to decision support techniques most often applied in today’s natural resources management, is the ability to deal with ordinal and more or less descriptive information on the alternative plans to be evaluated. Furthermore, the uncertainty concerning the values of the criterion variables can be taken into account using fuzzy relations, determined by indifference and preference thresholds. The difficult interpretation of the results, on the other hand, is the main drawback of the outranking methods.

Risk informed decision making in land use planning

The objective of the paper is to present a multicriteria decision methodology for supporting decisions about patterns of land development in the vicinity of major hazard installations. The proposed methodology is based on the paradigm of Multicriteria Decision Analysis and aims at integrating the results of risk analysis of major hazard installations with models for land use planning. The methodology possesses two main features: it is interactive and it does not require assessment of value tradeoffs prior to assessing the most preferred land use pattern. The latter is achieved by determining the efficient set of land use patterns by means of a dynamic programming-based algorithm. The proposed methodology and the use of the efficient set of solutions in supporting land use planning decisions are demonstrated through an application. Four criteria are used in the application, three referring to risk and one to the benefits of alternative land use patterns, although the methodology can accept any number of decision criteria as well as various types of land development. A computerized decision support system has been developed to implement the proposed methodology.

Reduction of pairwise comparisons in decision making via a duality approach

Although pairwise comparisons have been seen by many as an effective and intuitive way for eliciting qualitative data for multi -criteria decision making problems, a major drawback is that the number of the required comparisons increases quadratically with the number of the entities to be compared. Thus, often even data for medium size decision problems may be impractical to be elicited via pairwis e comparisons. The more the comparisons are, the higher is the likelihood that the decision maker will introduce erroneous data. This paper introduces a dual formulation to a given multi-criteria decision making problem, which can significantly alleviate the previous problems. Some theoretical results establish that this is possible when the number of alternatives is greater than the number of decision criteria plus one.

An Empirical Investigation of Integrated Multicriteria Group Decision Models in a Simulation/Gaming Context

This article proposes two models of group decision making that integrate mathematical and behavioral concepts. Further, the results of an empirical test of these two integrated spatial proximity multicriteria decision-making-problem-solving technology models are presented. The performance of these models is compared to the performance of a nonintegrated multicriteria model for two strategic operations decisions: plant location and process selection. The empirical test utilized free simulation methodology and was conducted in the context of the Business Management Laboratory simulation game. Results include the finding that both the integrated and nonintegrated models generally described choices more accurately than a random process did. Findings relating the performance of the integrated models to that of the nonintegrated model were mixed. For the process selection decision, one integrated model, TOPSIS-PST, outperformed the others. Additional results indicate that the number of decision criteria might be a critical factor to consider when selecting a multicriteria decision-making model Finally, the study showed free simulation to be a valuable methodology for the study of multicriteria decision making.

Decision Analysis in Venture Capital

A number of decision criteria are evaluated in the context of a portfolio of investments in venture capital. The essence of this activity is that it is a sequential decision problem with stochastic time intervals between decisions, where the choice is to make an investment or not. The pay-off from the investment is a payment of random magnitude after a time interval of random length. Some of the criteria used in security portfolio analysis are adapted for use in this context and compared with simpler criteria. Due to the typically risky nature of these investments, the level of information about the investment is kept to a realistic level. The results of simulation experiments demonstrate effectively the benefit of using rational decision criteria, but that there is surprisingly little difference between the effects of these criteria.