Elsevier

Applied Soft Computing

Volume 11, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 265-275
Applied Soft Computing

Fuzzy MCDM approach for selecting the best environment-watershed plan

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asoc.2009.11.017Get rights and content

Abstract

In the real word, the decision-making problems are very vague and uncertain in a number of ways. Most of the criteria have interdependent and interactive features, so they cannot be evaluated by conventional measure method. Such as the feasibility, thus, to approximate the human subjective evaluation process, it would be more suitable to apply a fuzzy method in the environment-watershed plan topic. This paper describes the design of a fuzzy decision support system in multi-criteria analysis approach for selecting the best plan alternatives or strategies in environment watershed. The fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) method is used to determine the preference weightings of criteria for decision makers by subjective perception (natural language). A questionnaire was used to find out from three related groups comprising 15 experts, including 5 from the university of expert scholars (include Water Resources Engineering and Conservation, Landscape and Recreation, Urban Planning, Environment Engineering, Architectural Engineering, etc.), 5 from the government departments, and 5 from industry. Subjectivity and vagueness analysis is dealt with the criteria and alternatives for selection process and simulation results by using fuzzy numbers with linguistic terms. It incorporated the decision-makers’ attitude towards the preference; overall performance value of each alternative can be obtained based on the concept of fuzzy multiple-criteria decision-making (FMCDM). This research also gives an example of evaluation consisting of five alternatives, solicited from an environment-watershed plan work in Taiwan, is illustrated to demonstrate the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed approach. The result is useful for destination planning and the sustainability of watershed tourism resources as well.

Introduction

Ordinary selection and evaluation of the environment-watershed plan considering various criteria is a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) process and then it is a popular approach to decision analysis in the watershed management, use and plan [1], [2], [3], [4]. However, in the past, many precision-based methods of MCDM for evaluating/selecting alternatives have been developed. These methods have been widely used in various fields such as location selection, information project selection, material selection, management decisions, strategy selection, and problems relating to be decision-making [5], [6], [7]. In the last few years, numerous attempts to handle this uncertainty, imprecision and subjectiveness have been carried out basically by fuzzy set theory, and the applications of fuzzy set theory to multi-criteria evaluation methods under the framework of utility theory have proven to be an effective approach [8], [7], [9].

When in initiating the best environment-watershed plan project, most government departments must consider life, produce ecologic environment engineering services in order to develop the preliminary plans and the associated details. In a project life cycle, this best plan phase is most critical to project success. Yet, when a best plan alternative is selected, most environment-watershed plan of government department owners is to lack the ability of effectively evaluating the candidates. Substandard the best plan work is often a direct result of inadequate tender selection.

For the best plan or government authorities, plan engineering not only acquires nice planning and design but also good plan to achieve the three goals for planning management with high efficiency and high quality: Firstly, the evaluation criteria are generally multiple and often structured in multilevel hierarchies; secondly, the evaluation process usually involves subjective assessments by perception, resulting in the use of qualitative and fallacious data; thirdly, other related interest groups’ input for the best plan alternative selection process should be considered.

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is widely used for multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) and has successfully been applied to many practical decision-making problems [10]. In spite of its popularity, the method is often criticized for its inability to adequately handle the inherent uncertainty and imprecision associated with the mapping of a decision-maker's perception to crisp numbers. The empirical effectiveness and theoretical validity of the AHP have also been discussed by many authors [11], [12], and this discussion has focused on four main areas: the axiomatic foundation, the correct meaning of priorities, the 1–9 measurement scale and the rank reversal problem. However, most of the problems in these areas have been partially resolved, at least for three-level hierarchic structures [13]. It is not our intention to contribute further to that discussion. Rather, the main objective of this paper is to propose a new approach to tackle uncertainty and imprecision within the prioritization process in the AHP, in particular, when the decision-maker's judgments are represented as fuzzy numbers or fuzzy sets. In the AHP, the decision problem is structured hierarchically at different levels, each level consisting of a finite number of elements.

However, in many cases the preference model of the human decision maker is uncertain and fuzzy and it is relatively difficult crisp numerical values of the comparison ratios to be provided by subjective perception. The decision maker may be subjective and uncertain about his level of preference due to incomplete information or knowledge, inherent complexity and uncertainty within the decision environment, lack of an appropriate measure or scale.

An effective evaluation procedure is essential in promoting decision quality for problem solving and a governmental agency must be able to respond to these problems and incorporate/solve them into the overall process. This study examines this group decision-making process and proposes a multi-criteria framework for the best plan alternative selection in the environment-watershed.

Fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy multiple-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) analysis have been widely used to deal with decision-making problems involving multiple-criteria evaluation/selection of alternatives [14], [15], [12], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], have shown advantages in handling unquantifiable/qualitative criteria and obtained quite reliable results. Thus, this research applied fuzzy set theory to the managerial decision-making problems of alternative selection, with the intention of establishing a framework of incorporating FAHP and FMCDM, in order to help a government entity select the most appropriate plan candidate for environment-watershed improvement/investment.

This research uses the FAHP to determine the criteria weights from subjective judgments of decision-making domain experts. Since the evaluation criteria of the best plan have the diverse connotations and meanings, there is no logical reason to treat them, as if they are each of equal importance. Furthermore, the FMCDM was used to evaluate the synthetic performance for the best plan alternatives, in order to handle qualitative (such as natural language) criteria that are difficult to describe in crisp values, thus strengthen the comprehensiveness and reasonableness of the decision-making process.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides discussion on the establishment of a hierarchical structure for the best plan evaluation, and a brief introduction to FAHP and FMCDM methods. In Section 3, in order to demonstrate the applicability of the framework, we then examine an empirical case as an illustration to demonstrate the synthesis decision using integration of FAHP and FMCDM approach for environment-watershed plan. In Section 4 discussions are conducted. Finally concluding remarks are presented in Section 5.

Section snippets

The best plan environment-watershed measurements

The purpose of this section is to establish a hierarchical structure for tackling the evaluation problem of the best environment-watershed plan alternative. Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is an analytic method to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of alternatives based on multiple criteria. MCDM problems can be broadly classified into two categories: multiple objective programming (MOP) and multiple-criteria evaluation (MCE) [24]. Since this study focuses mainly on the

An empirical case for selecting the best environment-watershed plan

When a government entity would like to construct a new environment watershed in Taiwan, it must follow sub-paragraph 9 of first paragraph, article 10 of the Government Procurement Law, to publicly and objectively select the best plan consultant company to provide professional services for follow-up to build environment watershed. Thus, this study used the previous case of the Pei-Keng Brook Environment-Watershed plan to exercise the process of engineering service tender selection.

The Pei-Keng

Discussions

This research presented the selection plan in the environment-watershed of a fuzzy decision support system for the assessment of alternative strategies proposed. It is highly affected by environment conservation and environment construction. In terms of the results, the priority order of weights of criteria for decision-making domain experts in the complete evaluation criteria hierarchy, we can see the decision-making domain experts in the decision-making process.

In this study of the best

Concluding remarks

Using the FMCDM can decide the relative weights of criteria. The FMCDM to construct a new plan model for environment-watershed effects, which may be worth doing further researches. This is an important finding in the study. The proposed model well suitable deal with any decision problem which constructs complicated and confused and whose criteria are dependent, so it can be applied to many fields, such as environment plan, psychology, consumer behavior, human resources management and so on. The

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