Interval-Valued Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making with Dependent Evaluation Criteria for Evaluating Service Performance of International Container Ports

Abstract

Due to COVID-19 barriers, the needs of international container ports have become more important than in the past. Therefore, it is very critical and essential for the scientific developments of port-logistics. To gain the scientific developments of port logistics, effective and efficient evaluation methods for decision-making are indispensable, especially for assessing service performance of international container ports based on dependent evaluation criteria (DEC). Among numerous decision-making methods, technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was often expanded under fuzzy environments into fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (FMCDM) to preserve imprecise messages. The FMCDM was able to be associated with quality function deployment (QFD) into a hybrid method to solve problems with DEC. To gain more messages, QFD and TOPSIS are combined and then expanded under interval-valued fuzzy environment (IVFE) to solve a FMCDM problem with DEC. Practically, evaluating service performance of international container ports in Taiwan and the surrounding sea areas is considered a problem with DEC because the related evaluation criteria are partially connected. By the hybrid method of combining QFD with TOPSIS under IVFE, international container ports with DEC are effectively and efficiently evaluated for service performance, and more insights are gained than the past for establishing essential fundamentals in recent scientific developments of port logistics on account of breaking down COVID-19 barriers.