An integrated fuzzy AHPﾖELECTRE methodology for environmental impact assessment An integrated fuzzy AHP–ELECTRE methodology for environmental impact assessment Tolga Kaya a,⇑, Cengiz Kahraman b a Istanbul Technical University, Department of Management Engineering, 34367 Macka, Istanbul, Turkey b Istanbul Technical University, Department of Industrial Engineering, 34367 Macka, Istanbul, Turkey a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Multicriteria Environmental impact assessment AHP ELECTRE Fuzzy dominance relation a b s t r a c t Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is the assessment of the possible impact that a proposed plan or project may have on the environment, together consisting of the natural, social and economic aspects. The aim of this paper is to propose an environmental impact assessment methodology based on an inte- grated fuzzy AHP–ELECTRE approach in the context of urban industrial planning. In the proposed meth- odology the criteria weights are generated by a fuzzy AHP procedure. The fuzzy set theory is a perfect means for modeling uncertainty or imprecision arising from human mental phenomena. The usage of fuzzy sets in describing uncertainties and vagueness in different environmental factors simplifies the complex structure of EIA. A fuzzy outranking methodology, fuzzy ELECTRE is used to assess the environ- mental impact generated by the six different industrial districts which were predicted to shape the future industrial structure of Istanbul metropolitan area. Finally, a fuzzy dominance relation (FDR) methodology is used to rank the alternatives from the most risky to the least. A sensitivity analysis is also provided. � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is the process of identi- fying, predicting, evaluating and mitigating the biophysical, social, and other relevant effects of development proposals prior to major decisions being taken and commitments made (International Asso- ciation for Impact Assessment (IAIA), 1999). EIA is an important procedure for ensuring that the likely effects of new development on the environment are fully understood and taken into account before the development is allowed to proceed. EIA enables envi- ronmental factors to be given due weight, along with economic or social factors, when planning applications are being considered. If properly carried out, it benefits all those involved in the planning process. For the planning authority and other public bodies with environmental responsibilities, environmental impact assessment provides a basis for better decision making. Decision making in environmental problems can be complex and multifaceted due to the inherent trade-offs between sociopo- litical, environmental, ecological, and economic factors. Moreover, environmental decisions may involve many different stakeholders with different priorities or objectives. The selection of appropriate remedial strategies for contaminated sites, land use planning, and regulatory processes often involves multiple criteria such as the distribution of costs and benefits, environmental impacts for dif- ferent populations, safety, ecological risk, or human values. Consid- erable research in the area of multicriteria decision making (MCDM) has made available practical methods for applying scien- tific decision theoretical approaches to complex multicriteria prob- lems (Kiker, Bridges, Varghese, Seager, & Linkovjj, 2005). Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) (Ramanathan, 2001; Tran et al., 2002), ELECTRE (Joerin & Musy, 2000; Rogers & Bruen, 1998), PROM- ETHEE (Al-Rashdan, Al-Kloub, Dean, & Al-Shemmeri, 1999; Vaillan- court & Waaub, 2002), and multiple attribute utility theory (MAUT) (Prato, 2003; Store & Kangas, 2001) are among the MCDM tech- niques which are widely used in environmental decision making issues. Environmental assessments often have to deal with attributes difficult to define and components that may involve both quantita- tive and qualitative factors. EIA is a complex issue not only because of its wide scope but also because of the wide range of attributes that bear on its assessment. In terms of scope, an assessment may cover subjective and vague decisions that may affect various interest groups or stakeholders each with their own demands and needs. In view of these difficulties, methods based on fuzzy lo- gic may be quite useful in undertaking difficult assessment proce- dures. The fuzzy set theory (Zadeh, 1965) was introduced to express the linguistic terms in decision-making process in order to resolve the vagueness, ambiguity and subjectivity of human judgment. Fuzzy methods may be very useful in dealing with com- plex and ill defined environmental decision making problems (Mendoza & Prabhu, 2003). 0957-4174/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2011.01.057 ⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: kayatolga@itu.edu.tr (T. Kaya). Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 8553–8562 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Expert Systems with Applications j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / e s w a http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2011.01.057 mailto:kayatolga@itu.edu.tr http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eswa.2011.01.057 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09574174 http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa The ELECTRE method for choosing the best action from a given set of actions was devised in 1965. The acronym ELECTRE stands for ‘‘ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalite (ELimination and Choice Expressing the REality)’’. ELECTRE is a well known MCDM method that has a history of successful real world applications. It has been applied in past to various types of decision-making situ- ations. ELECTRE requires an input of criteria evaluations for the alternatives, called decision matrix, preference information, ex- pressed as weights, thresholds, and other parameters (Sevkli, 2009). All the ELECTRE-type methods involve two major proce- dures: the modeling of preferences with outranking relations, fol- lowed by an exploitation procedure. The outranking relation of Ak ? Al says that Ak outranks Al, if Ak is at least as good as Al on a majority of criteria and this result is not significantly based on any of the other criteria. ELECTRE methods can operate with one or several crispy or fuzzy outranking relations (1990; Benayoun, Roy, & Sussmann, 1966; Montazer, Saremi, & Ramezani, 2009; Roy, 1985; Shanian & Savadogo, 2006). In fuzzy ELECTRE, linguistic preferences can easily be converted to fuzzy numbers. For the determination of the relative importance of evaluation criteria, fuzzy AHP can be used since it is based on pairwise comparisons and allows the utilization of linguistic vari- ables. From paired comparisons a relative scale of measurement is derived. Although the pairwise comparison approach is demand- ing in terms of solicited input from the experts, it offers maximum insight, particularly in terms of assessing consistency of the ex- perts’ judgment. This technique is ideal for closer examination of a selected set of EIA criteria in urban industrial planning context. In this study, an integrated fuzzy AHP–ELECTRE methodology is proposed for EIA. In the proposed methodology, the weights of the assessment criteria are determined by a fuzzy AHP procedure. With the proposed methodology, six urban districts which were predicted to be among the developing industrial areas according to the Istanbul 2006 Metropolitan Plan will be evaluated in terms of EIA. Finally, using a fuzzy dominance relation (FDR) approach, the most risky industrial districts will be determined in order to provide a base for urban industrial rehabilitation strategies. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, a lit- erature review about multiple attribute EIA is briefly given. In the third section, an integrated fuzzy AHP–ELECTRE methodology is presented. In Section 4, following the determination of the selec- tion criteria and alternatives, the proposed methodology is applied to an urban industrial EIA problem. In Section 5, a sensitivity anal- ysis is provided. Finally, in the last section, conclusions and sugges- tions for further study are given. 2. Literature review EIA is a process of having the ultimate object of providing deci- sion makers with an indication of the likely consequences of their actions. In other words, EIA is an assessment of the impacts of a planned activity on the environment. It is a significant, anticipa- tory, environmental management tool. International debate fo- cuses on its enhancement to meet the challenges of sustainable development and demands for scientifically robust integrated and participative decision-making (Morris & Therivel, 2003; Petts, 1999; Wathern, 2001). There is a vast MCDM literature which deals with EIA problems: Marttunen and Hamalainen (1995) presented the decision analysis interview-method and applied the methodology to the assessment of the environmental impacts of two water development projects. Geldermann, Spengler, & Rentz, 2000 proposed using PROMETHEE for environmental assessment and provided a case study in iron and steel making industry. Spengler, Geldermann, Hahre, Siever- dingbeck, and Rentz (1998) developed a multiple criteria based decision support system for environmental assessment of recycling measures in the iron and steel making industry. Al-Rashdan et al. (1999) used PROMETHEE for EIA and ranking the environmental projects in Jordan. Janssen (2001) provided an overview on the use of multicriteria analysis in EIA in the Netherlands. Ramanathan (2001) used AHP for capturing the perceptions of stakeholders on the relative severity of different socio-economic impacts, which will help the authorities in prioritizing their environmental man- agement plan and allocating the budget available for mitigating adverse socio-economic impacts. Seppala, Basson, and Norris (2002) provided an overview of the commonly used MCDM methods and discuss life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) in relation to them. Bojorquez-Tapia, Sanchez- Colon, and Martınez (2005) combined two MCDM techniques, sto- chastic AHP and compromise programming, to ascertain the envi- ronmental impacts of and to rank two alternative sites for Mexico City’s new airport. Payraudeau and van der Werf (2005) provided an analysis of six main types of methodologies (environmental risk mapping, life cycle analysis, environmental impact assessment, multi-agent system, linear programming and agro-environmental indicators) to illustrate the variety of methods used in EIA. Wang, Table 1 EIA evaluation criteria proposed by Liu and Lai (2009). EIA aspects EIA criteria Environmental pollution Air pollution Water pollution Soil pollution Noise pollution Solid waste pollution Ecological alteration Terrestrial Aquatic Socioeconomic disturbance Economics Society Culture Fig. 1. Membership function of TrFN ~m. Table 2 Fuzzy evaluation scale for the weights. Linguistic terms Fuzzy score Absolutely strong (AS) (5/2, 3, 7/2, 4) Very strong (VS) (2, 5/2, 3, 7/2) Fairly strong (FS) (3/2, 2, 5/2, 3) Slightly strong (SS) (1, 3/2, 2, 5/2) Equal (E) (1, 1, 1, 1) Slightly weak (SW) (2/5, 1/2, 2/3, 1) Fairly weak (FW) (1/3, 2/5, 1/2, 2/3) Very weak (VW) (2/7, 1/3, 2/5, 1/2) Absolutely weak (AW) (1/4, 2/7, 1/3, 2/5) 8554 T. Kaya, C. Kahraman / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 8553–8562 https://isiarticles.com/article/6239