Evaluating Annual Operation Performance of Serbian Railway System by using Multiple Criteria Decision-Making Technique

Abstract

The railway is a complex dynamic system, including the railway infrastructure, vehicles and personnel, each of which has its own functions or goals. Evaluating operation performance for freight and passenger railway systems is important for the government, operators and passengers. This paper will use a well-known, Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) technique, to evaluate the freight and passenger rail systems operational performance. Initially, the authors will create the evaluation indicator system based on official data, having 5 basic indicators and a total of 18 sub-indicators, for freight transport, as well as passenger transport. Also, these operational data/indicators will be used as the input for the MCDM approach. Next, a formulated approach to obtain the performance evaluation is used as follows: The Entropy weight method is employed to calculate the weight of each sub-indicator; the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method, will be used to calculate the comprehensive evaluation values and rankings of performance for each year. Finally, the Serbian railway, with 7 years of data, will be chosen, as the case study, to test the MCDM approach; the related recommendations for freight transport, as well as passenger rail transport, will also be provided.