Multicriteria approach to sustainable transport evaluation under incomplete knowledge: Electric bikes case study

Abstract

The problem of sustainable city transport is a growing field of study, and will be addressed in this paper. With the rising significance of present transportation systems' negative externalities on the environment, such as the unavoidable increase of air pollution levels, cities seek sustainable means of transport and reduction of combustion cars' utilization. Moreover, improvements in the area of renewable energy sources have led to rising trends in sustainability, driving the usage and production of electric vehicles. Currently, there is an increasing tendency of looking for more sustainable transport solutions, especially in highly congested urban areas. It seems that in that case, electric bicycles can be a good option, as they yield more benefits in comparison to cars, especially combustion cars. In this paper, we identify an assessment model for the selection of the best electric bicycle for sustainable city transport by using incomplete knowledge. For this purpose, the Characteristic Objects METhod (COMET) is used. The COMET method, proven effective in the assessment of sustainable challenges, is a modern approach, utterly free of the rank reversal phenomenon. The evaluated model considers investigated multiple criteria and is independent of chosen alternatives in the criteria domain. Hence, it can be easily modified and extended for diverse sets of decisional variants. Moreover, the presented approach allows assessing alternatives under conditions of incomplete knowledge, where some data are presented as possible interval numbers.