FUZZY MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING METHOD FOR DAM SELECTION

This research formulates the process of a dam selection (in the district of Chalkidiki in Northern Greece) as a multi-criteria analysis problem. The TOPSIS method (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) is chosen among the several methods which are used for multi-criteria decision making. The principle of TOPSIS method is that the chosen alternative should be as close to the ideal solution as possible and at the same time as far as possible from the negative-ideal solution. For the application, certain criteria have been selected for each alternative and as the optimal solution, the alternative showing the greatest performance was considered. The selected criteria are five: a) x(1)= hydrology, b) x(2)= geology, c) x(3)= environment, d) x(4)= hydropower and e) x(5)= total cost. The ratings of each alternative and the weight of each criterion represents uncertainties and were described by linguistic terms which can be expressed in triangular fuzzy numbers. As a second approach, there has been a proposition of evaluating the criteria's weights using an objective method, meaning Shannon's entropy.