Multi-criteria group decision-making for optimal management of water supply with fuzzy ELECTRE-based outranking method

This study elevates the potential of ELECTRE IV method using the logical backgrounds of fuzzy sets in the proposed fuzzy ELECTRE IV method to capture the water supply problem of Iran. ELECTRE IV method, being an advanced variant of ELECTRE family, operates on the outranking principle to achieve the results using three types of preferences and five dominance relations that exhibit different levels of superiorities among alternatives. The proposed procedure is designed to exhibit the linguistic preferences via triangular fuzzy numbers which are compared on the basis of their corresponding magnitudes. The proposed approach successfully captures the pseudo criteria using three threshold values to filter out the preferences and then classifying the level of dominance. Moreover, ranking is derived by combining two pre-orders, i.e., ascending and descending pre-orders. The main contribution of this study is the implementation of outranking caliber of proposed fuzzy ELECTRE IV method to address the water supply problem in the Kermanshah province of Iran, concerning the selection of optimal site for Kandoleh dam. The comparisons with two existing techniques, fuzzy TOPSIS method and integrated fuzzy delphi and fuzzy ELECTRE method, are conducted to verify the authenticity and competency of the proposed technique.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).