An intuitionistic fuzzy MCDM approach for effective hazardous waste management

Abstract

Improperly handled hazardous waste can pose significant threat to human health and the environment. Safety of waste transportation is an important aspect of hazardous waste management. This makes the evaluation and selection of the most suitable hazardous waste transportation firm (HWTF) a crucial problem for hazardous waste generators. A number of factors affect the selection of the proper HWTF, which need to be addressed with usually vague and imprecise data provided by a team of experts from different backgrounds. This chapter proposes a systematic and integrated multi criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to support the HWTF selection process. This approach is based on the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method in an intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) environment. A Group Decision Making (GDM) approach is utilized by the means of IF to minimize the bias stemming from experts’ fuzzy evaluations and to better manage the associated uncertainties and partiality. A real case application from Turkey is presented to illustrate the use of the proposed methodology.