Study of decision framework of offshore wind power station site selection based on ELECTRE-III under intuitionistic fuzzy environment: A case of China

Offshore wind power projects have been rapidly proposed in China due to policy promotion. Site selection immensely decides the success of any offshore wind power development and is a complex multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. However, canonical MCDM methods tend to fail the site selection process due to the following three problems. Firstly, the compensation problem exists in information processing. Secondly, there exists the problem of incomplete utilization of decision information and information loss in the decision process. Thirdly, the interaction problem in the fuzzy environment is easy to be ignored. To deal with the above problems, this study builds a framework for offshore wind farm site selection decision utilizing Elimination et Choix Traduisant la Realite-III (ELECTRE-III) in the intuitionistic fuzzy environment. First of all, the comprehensive index system of OWPS site selection consisting of veto criteria and evaluation criteria is constructed. Then, the intuitionistic fuzzy set is used in the group decision for the decision makers to express the imperfect knowledge. Moreover, the generalized intuitionistic fuzzy ordered weighted geometric interaction averaging (GIFWGIA) operator is applied to deal with the interaction problem. Together with the likelihood-based valued comparisons, imprecise decision information is reasonably used and information loss problem is rationally avoided. Then a case of China is studied based on the proposed framework, demonstrating the site selection methodology valid and practical. This study implements evaluation method for offshore wind power site selection and also provides a theoretical basis for the development of offshore wind power decision-making in China. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.