Fuzzy multicriteria decision making approach for airport performance analysis

Havaalanları, havayolu sisteminin karmaşık, dinamik ve en önemli yapısıdır. Sistem bütünlüğü içinde sunulan hizmetlerde işlevselliğin ve kalitenin sağlanması gerekir. Yalnızca ulaşım ihtiyaçlarının karşılandığı değil, daha ticari yapıda kazanç getirme anlayışı ile işletilmeleri doğrultusunda değişim yaşamaktadırlar. Bu değişen anlayışlara göre hedefler de değişmektedir. Belirlenen hedeflere ulaşılmasında başarılı olunması için sunulan hizmetler açısından performanslarının sürekli en üst düzeyde tutulması gerekmektedir. Bu çalışmada havaalanlarının hem kendi iç performanslarının değerlendirilebileceği hem de benzer havaalanları ile karşılaştırma yapılabileceği, yolcular, havayolu işletmeleri, havaalanı işletmecisi ve bölge yaşayanlarının beklentileri ve almak istedikleri hizmetlere ilişkin oluşturulan hizmet, operasyonel ve teknik, finansal ve çevresel ölçütlerle kullanıcıya odaklı bir performans modeli geliştirilmiştir. Bu model ile özellikle belirlenen hedefler doğrultusunda havaalanlarının üst düzeyde performans ile işletilebilmesinin çok taraflı sorumluluk gerektiren bir faaliyet olduğu vurgulanması amaçlanmıştır. Bu modelde ölçütler için elde edilen verilerin klasik sayısal ve sözel nitelikli olmaları nedeniyle, model için en uygun yöntemin Bulanık Çok Ölçütlü Karar Verme yaklaşımının olduğu kanısına varılmış ve model çalışmasında Bulanık TOPSIS ve Bulanık Basit Ağırlıklı Toplam yöntemleri kullanılmıştır. Uygulama olarak iki ayrı çalışma yapılmıştır. Bunlardan ilki, İstanbul Atatürk, İzmir Adnan Menderes, Bodrum, Dalaman ve Antalya havalimanlarının karşılaştırılması, diğeri İstanbul Atatürk, Atina Venizelos, Viyana ve Münih Havalimanları arasında performans karşılaştırmasıdır.  Anahtar Kelimeler: Havaalanları, performans, çok ölçütlü karar verme, bulanık kümeler.Air transportation, which provides fast, reliable and comfortable transportation, enables the different geographical areas to be closer, and thus it causes to develop the commercial, touristic and social life and to meet different cultures. Privatization, commercialism, liberalization concepts along with the rapid developments of economic and social transformations has not only influenced the air carrier system but also airports which are the most important elements of the air transportation system. In the frame of these new concepts, airports which are the ones of the basic service sector investments are transformed from the public investments providing only transportation needs, to the investments making trade and earning profits by providing various type of services. Some of these airports have big goals such as being international hubs which supply much more gains not only for themselves but also for their region and countries. By  all these transformations and goals, in order to go further and better levels, in the sense of operation of the airports, evaluating the internal performances of airports and benchmarking them with  similar airports should be performed, then necessary improvements and arrangements in the direction of the performance results should be applied. At the airports, there are different customers and interest groups which have different expectations from the airports. These are mainly passengers, airlines, airport operators and regional residents. In this study, arising from the idea of “airports’ performances should be represented not only by the performance levels of the expectations of one customer group, but also those of all customer or interest groups’ as well”, a customer oriented performance model composed of the service, operational and technical, financial and environmental criteria representing the expectations of passengers, airlines, airport operators and regional residents, has been developed for airports. This model enables the airports’ internal performances to be evaluated and their performances to be compared with those of the other airports. With this model, it is aimed to stress that operating the airports at the highest performance levels depend on the activities which require multi responsibilities for reaching the goals. Because of the fact that there are many criteria to be evaluated for the model and the data required for these criteria  are both objective  and subjective, it  is  decided that the most suitable approach is Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision Making. In evaluation of the model, “Fuzzy TOPSIS” and “Fuzzy Simple Additive Weighting” methods were used and for Fuzzy TOPSIS method, Chen and Hwang’s right and left scoring  ranking, for Fuzzy Simple Additive Weighting method, Abdel- Kader and Dugdale’s and Liou and Wang’s  ranking methods were applied. Weighting of the criteria and rating of the airports have been performed directly by customers and interest groups. In this study, two case studies were performed. The first one was the comparison of Istanbul Atatürk, Izmir Adnan Menderes, Bodrum, Dalaman and Antalya Airports in Turkey. The results of general evaluations of this case study demonstrate that the performances of airports which their international terminals are operated by private sector, are higher than those of the airports operated by public sector. Also, the results demonstrate that the rate of international passengers affect the financial performance of airports. The second case study is the comparisons of performances of Istanbul Ataturk, Athens Venizelos, Munich and Vienna airports. At this practice, the service and operation and technical submodels were integrated as a general model and it aims to test the competitive strength of Atatürk airport against to Athens Venizelos, Munih, Vienna airports. At the second case study, two comparison were performed. At comparison among İstanbul Atatürk, Vienna and Munich Airports, İstanbul Atatürk Airport has the lowest performance score. At the second comparison, the performance of Ataturk Airport was compared with that of Athens Venizelos Airport. As seen in the result, their scores are very close. Istanbul Ataturk and Athens Airports serve in the same geographic region and their strategic goals are being international hub. In this way, the winning airport will be the one which will make the required investment and utilize the marketing techniques created by their skills to develop its performance. In this study, the importance of the evaluation of airports’ performance has been stressed and proposed an “Airports’ Performance Monitoring and Developing Organization” to be established by Civil Aviation Authorities.  Keywords: Airports, performance, multicriteria decision making, fuzzy sets

Marine parks for protection and tourism in Turkey

Protected Turkish areas in the Mediterranean region are compared with those of other Mediterranean countries. Policies followed in Turkey for conservation protection of the natural and cultural environment and the use of coastal resources for tourism are discussed. The purpose and application of Turkish law is examined with respect to the interaction between the protection of coastal areas and tourism. Modifications on the administrative and management regulations in Turkey enabling a better use of coastal areas is suggested by combining coastal tourism and protection. The necessity and importance of establishing and managing Marine Parks in short- and long-term plans are acknowledged