Engineering Management Department, Graduate Institute for Pure and Applied Sciences, Marmara University, Goztepe, Istanbul, Turkey.
Environmental Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Marmara University, Goztepe, Istanbul, Turkey.
Sci Rep. 2022 May 25;12(1):8800. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-12643-1.
Optimal technology selection of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) necessitates the adoption of data-driven scientific approaches that satisfy the sustainability requirements of the urban ecosystem. Such approaches should be able to provide actionable insights to decision makers constrained by factors such as population growth, land scarcity, and loss of functionality of wastewater treatment plants. The framework in this study proposes a hybrid fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model consisting of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multi-criteria decision-making) by using alpha cut series which takes into account the risk aversion of decision makers (DMs) to overcome uncertainties of environmental conditions. The literature to date indicates that the study is the first to presents how a systematic decision-making process is approached by interpreting the interaction of criteria for the selection of wastewater treatment technology through the membership function of Prospect Theory. The proposed methodology reveals that the prominent reference criterion manipulates other sub-criteria according to the function of risk-aversion behavior. The fuzzy sets based on alpha cut series are employed to evaluate both the criteria weight and the rank of the alternatives in the decision-making process to obtain compromise solutions under uncertainty. The dominance degrees of the alternatives are achieved by fuzzy TODIM integrated with the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) which deals with the uncertainty of human judgements. According to the ranking results determined by the dominance degree of alternatives, anaerobic-anoxic-oxic (A2O) without pre-clarification was the most effective process in relation to the sludge disposal cost (C25) calculated as reference criteria. The ranking of four full-scale WWTPs in a metropolitan city of an EMEA country based on 24 sub-criteria listed under the four main criteria, namely the dimensions of sustainability, is used as a case study to verify the usefulness of the fuzzy approach. Motivated by the literature gap related to the failure to consider the psychological behavior of DMs in technology selection problem for wastewater treatment, it is discussed how the proposed hybrid MCDM model can be utilized by reflecting human risk perception in wastewater treatment technology selection for developing urban areas.
优化污水处理厂 (WWTP) 的技术选择需要采用满足城市生态系统可持续性要求的数据驱动科学方法。这些方法应该能够为决策者提供可行的见解，决策者受到人口增长、土地短缺和污水处理厂功能丧失等因素的限制。本研究中的框架提出了一种混合模糊多准则决策 (MCDM) 模型，该模型由层次分析法 (AHP) 和 TODIM（葡萄牙语中交互和多准则决策的缩写）组成，使用 alpha 切割系列考虑决策者 (DM) 的风险规避，以克服环境条件不确定性。迄今为止的文献表明，该研究首次通过解释通过前景理论的隶属函数选择废水处理技术的标准相互作用，提出了如何通过系统决策过程。所提出的方法表明，突出的参考标准根据风险规避行为的功能操纵其他子标准。基于 alpha 切割系列的模糊集用于评估决策过程中的标准权重和替代方案的等级，以在不确定性下获得折衷解决方案。通过模糊 TODIM 与模糊层次分析法 (FAHP) 的集成来实现替代方案的优势度，FAHP 处理人类判断的不确定性。根据替代方案的优势度确定的排名结果，在与污泥处置成本 (C25) 相关的情况下，没有预澄清的厌氧-缺氧-好氧 (A2O) 是最有效的工艺，C25 被计算为参考标准。根据四个主要标准（可持续性维度）下列出的 24 个子标准，对一个 EMEA 国家大都市的四个全规模 WWTP 进行排名，作为案例研究，验证模糊方法的有用性。受文献中关于在污水处理技术选择问题中未能考虑决策者心理行为的相关研究空白的启发，讨论了如何通过反映人类在污水处理技术选择中的风险感知来利用所提出的混合 MCDM 模型，为发展中城市选择污水处理技术。
