Trapezoidal fuzzy BWM-TOPSIS approach and application on water resources

The world lacks access to clean water for approximately a quarter million people. It is estimated that only 1% of the Earth's 2.5% water can be used. In developing countries, almost 80% of the three million early deaths can be attributed to drinking contaminated water due to organic and inorganic pollutants. Therefore, it is imperative that the treatment plants for surface water and waste water that supply treated water to the public is monitored regularly in order to ensure the quality of treated water. Water treatment plants performance can be evaluated using a variety of methods. However, these methods are absolute since they give equal weight to all parameters, which only partly reflects reality. This paper presents a hybrid decision making technique combining trapezoidal fuzzy BWM with trapezoidal fuzzy TOPSIS, whose goal is to determine the most beneficial alternative to improve the effectiveness of a water treatment plant (WTP). To evaluate the weights of criteria, the trapezoidal fuzzy BWM is employed, and TOPSIS is used to rank the alternatives. From the results, it is clearly found that water quality is the most responsible alternative. A sensitivity analysis validates the results obtained by the proposed study.