Enhancing geographical information systems capabilities with multi-criteria evaluation functions

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Environmental urbanization assessment using gis and multicriteria decision analysis: a case study for Denizli (Turkey) municipal area

In recent years, life quality of the urban areas is a growing interest of civil engineering. Environmental quality is essential to display the position of sustainable development and asserts the corresponding countermeasures to the protection of environment. Urban environmental quality involves multidisciplinary parameters and difficulties to be analyzed. The problem is not only complex but also involves many uncertainties, and decision-making on these issues is a challenging problem which contains many parameters and alternatives inherently. Multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a very prepotent technique to solve that sort of problems, and it guides the users confidence by synthesizing that information. Environmental concerns frequently contain spatial information. Spatial multicriteria decision analysis (SMCDA) that includes Geographic Information System (GIS) is efficient to tackle that type of problems. This study has employed some geographic and urbanization parameters to assess the environmental urbanization quality used by those methods. The study area has been described in five categories: very favorable, favorable, moderate, unfavorable, and very unfavorable. The results are momentous to see the current situation, and they could help to mitigate the related concerns. The study proves that the SMCDA descriptions match the environmental quality perception in the city. © 2018 Erdal Akyol et al

Public initiatives of settlement transformation. A theoretical-methodological approach to selecting tools of multi-criteria decision analysis

In Europe, the operating context in which initiatives of settlement transformation are currently initiated is characterized by a complex, elaborate combination of technical, regulatory and governance-related factors. A similar set of considerations makes it necessary to address the complex decision-making problems to be resolved through multidisciplinary, comparative approaches designed to rationalize the process and treat the elements to be considered in systematic fashion with respect to the range of alternatives available as solutions. Within a context defined in this manner, decision-making processes must often be used to obtain multidisciplinary and multidimensional analyses to support the choices made by the decision-makers. Such analyses are carried out using multi-criteria tools designed to arrive at syntheses of the numerous forms of input data needed to describe decision-making problems of similar complexity, so that one or more outcomes of the synthesis make possible informed, well thought-out, strategic decisions. The technical literature on the topic proposes numerous tools of multi-criteria analysis for application in different decision-making contexts. Still, no specific contributions have been drawn up to date on the approach to take in selecting the tool best suited to providing adequate responses to the queries of evaluation that arise most frequently in the various fields of application, and especially in the settlement sector. The objective of this paper is to propose, by formulating a taxonomy of the endogenous and exogenous variables of tools of multi-criteria analysis, a methodology capable of selecting the tool best suited to the queries of evaluation which arise regarding the chief categories of decision-making problems, and particularly in the settlement sector

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SOME PROMINENT MCDM METHODS: A CASE OF RANKING SERBIAN BANKS

In the literature, many multiple criteria decision making methods have been proposed. There are also a number of papers, which are devoted to comparison of their characteristics and performances. However, a definitive answer to questions: which method is most suitable and which method is most effective is still actual. Therefore, in this paper, the use of some prominent multiple criteria decision making methods is considered on the example of ranking Serbian banks. The objective of this paper is not to determine which method is most appropriate for ranking banks. The objective of this paper is to emphasize that the use of various multiple criteria decision making methods sometimes can produce different ranking orders of alternatives, highlighted some reasons which lead to different results, and indicate that different results obtained by different MCDM methods are not just a random event, but rather reality

A new multi-criteria approach for sustainable material selection problem

Sustainable material selection is a crucial problem given the new demands of society and novel production strategies that consider the concepts of sustainability. Multi-criteria decision-making methods have been extensively used to help decision-makers select alternatives in different fields of knowledge. Nonetheless, these methods have been criticized due to the rank reversal problem, where the independence of the irrelevant alternative principle is violated after the initial decision problem is changed. Over the course of this study, we observed that the solutions that are proposed for this problem, in the context of sustainable material selection, are insufficient. Thus, we present a new material selection approach that is based on the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method, which is immune to rank reversal. We also demonstrate the causes of rank reversal in the TOPSIS method, how the R-TOPSIS method was designed to solve them, and how it can be applied to sustainable material selection

Managing Interacting Criteria: Application to Environmental Evaluation Practices

The need for organizations to evaluate their environmental practices has been recently increasing. This fact has led to the development of many approaches to appraise such practices. In this paper, a novel decision model to evaluate company’s environmental practices is proposed to improve traditional evaluation process in different facets. Firstly, different reviewers’ collectives related to the company’s activity are taken into account in the process to increase company internal efficiency and external legitimacy. Secondly, following the standard ISO 14031, two general categories of environmental performance indicators, management and operational, are considered. Thirdly, since the assumption of independence among environmental indicators is rarely verified in environmental context, an aggregation operator to bear in mind the relationship among such indicators in the evaluation results is proposed. Finally, this new model integrates quantitative and qualitative information with different scales using a multi-granular linguistic model that allows to adapt diverse evaluation scales according to appraisers’ knowledge

Comparing Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods for the Assessment of Flow Release Scenarios From Small Hydropower Plants in the Alpine Area

Growing energy demand and targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are driving a significant hydropower (HP) generation expansion in the Alpine area. However, despite its advantages, HP implementation causes several impacts on the ecological status of river systems and the preservation of characteristic landscapes. The use of decision-making tools, like multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods, can provide helpful support to achieve more sustainable solutions for complex water management problems. In Aosta Valley (NW Italy), an MCDM experimental approach is being applied to define the optimal environmental flow scenario to be released by HP plants, in an attempt to balance energy production needs, economic profitability and environmental safeguard. Four criteria are considered (energy, environment and fishing, landscape, economy) and key stakeholders are involved in the entire decision-making process. However, there is a need to test also other MCDM methodologies in order to understand if an alternative approach could be more suitable for future, more complex, HP management decisions. Therefore, in this paper, seven different MCDM methods are applied to an existing small run-of-the-river HP plant for the selection of the optimal flow release scenario, i.e., SAW, WPM, AHP, TOPSIS, VIKOR, ELECTRE III, and the initially adopted method, SHARE MCA. The results obtained with the application of the different MCDM methods are investigated and statistically compared. The strengths and weaknesses of the different methodological approaches are also discussed. Based on the comparative results and the consequent evaluations, SHARE MCA, WPM, and VIKOR appear to have the most interesting characteristics in terms of overall feasibility