An Extension of the CODAS Approach Using Interval-Valued Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set for Sustainable Material Selection in Construction Projects with Incomplete Weight Information

Optimal selection of sustainable materials in construction projects can benefit several stakeholders in their respective industries with the triple bottom line (TBL) framework in a broader perspective of greater business value. Multiple criteria of social, environmental, and economic aspects should be essentially accounted for the optimal selection of materials involving the significant group of experts to avoid project failures. This paper proposes an evaluation framework for solving multi criteria decision making (MCDM) problems with incomplete weight information by extending the combinative distance assessment (CODAS) method with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. To compute the unknown weights of the evaluation criteria, this paper presents an optimization model based on the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy distance measure. In this study, we emphasize the importance of individual decision makers. To illustrate the proposed approach, an example of material selection in automotive parts industry is presented followed by a real case study of brick selection in sustainable building construction projects. The comparative study indicates the advantages of the proposed approach in comparison with the some relevant approaches. A sensitivity analysis of the proposed IVIF-CODAS method has been performed by changing the criteria weights, where the results show a high degree of stability.