A hybrid fuzzy multiple criteria group decision making approach for sustainable project selection

In this paper, a new hybrid fuzzy multiple criteria group decision making (FMCGDM) approach has been proposed for sustainable project selection. First, a comprehensive framework, including economic, social, and environmental effects of an investment, strategic alliance, organizational readiness, and risk of investment has been proposed for sustainable project selection. As the relative importance of the criteria of the proposed framework are hard to find through several conflictive preferences of a group of Decision Makers (DMs) so, a goal programming (GP) has been supplied to this aim considering multiplicative and fuzzy preference relation. Then, a fuzzy TOPSIS method has been developed to assess the fitness of investment chances. It is based on Preference Ratio (PR), which is known as an efficient ranking method for fuzzy numbers, and a fuzzy distance measurement. The properties of proposed hybrid approach make it robust for modeling real case of uncertain group decision making problems. The FMCGDM has been developed through a linkage between Lingo 11.0, MS-Excel 12.0, and Visual Basic 6.0. The proposed hybrid approach has been applied in a real case study called Iranian financial and credit institute for sustainable project selection. (C) 2012 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.