Development of fuzzy multi-criteria decision analysis approach for contaminated site management.

Selection of a proper remediation alternative is an important task in the decision making process of contaminated site management. The number of available remediation alternatives is increasing over the years as a result of perpetual development in scientific research. Decision makers face a confounded situation to select the best acceptable alternative by satisfying various preferences of different stakeholders (e.g., industry, government, public_. In this research, a fuzzy multi-criteria decision analysis (FMCDA) approach was developed. Since most information available in the decision making process is not deterministic, fuzzy-set theory was used to deal with such uncertainty. The developed FMCDA approach ranks the candidate alternatives according to the utility value which then assists decision makers in selecting more proper remediation options. Different stakeholders' opinions were effectively incorporated in the developed approach, allowing for a robust decision making for contaminated site management. A user friendly decision support system based on the FMCDA approach was also developed in this research. The developed method was then applied to the management of a site in northern British Columbia to examine its applicability. As well, existing multi-criteria decision making methods were also applied to the remediation selection of this site. The results suggest that the developed FMCDA method is more capable of considering uncertainty issues and it is a helpful means of integrating various interests from different stakeholders.