AbstractSemiflowable self-consolidating concrete (SF-SCC) is a new type of self-consolidating concrete with flowability, green strength, and shape-holding ability in the fresh state. SF-SCC is ...cost-effective, energy-efficient, and low-carbon-footprint concrete because vibrators can be eliminated. This paper discusses the fresh, strength (compressive, splitting tensile, and flexure), durability (chloride ion penetration, water absorption, and water penetration), and microstructural properties of SF-SCC mixes with sugarcane bagasse ash (SCBA) as the cement replacing material at 10%–50% by weight of cement. The results show that all the mixes complied with the requirements of fresh properties of SF-SCC. The strength and durability results were used to validate the suitability of such SF-SCC mixes for rigid pavement construction as per the specifications of the Indian Roads Congress (IRC). It can be concluded that the mixes with as much as 40% SCBA can be used in urban roads. All the mixes with as much as 50% SCBA can be used in the construction of road pavements in the interior part of rural areas, i.e., village roads. The study also involved Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) analysis for ranking of the mixes.
In view of the fact that traditional air target threat as-sessment methods are difficult to reflect the combat characteristics of uncertain, dynamic and hybrid formation, an algorithm is pro-posed to ...solve the multi-target threat assessment problems. The target attribute weight is calculated by the intuitionistic fuzzy en-tropy (IFE) algorithm and the time series weight is gained by the Poisson distribution method based on multi-times data. Finally, assessment and sequencing of the air multi-target threat model based on IFE and dynamic VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kom-promisno Resenje(VIKOR)is established with an example which indicates that the method is reasonable and effective.
Global warming and climate change are the most pressing issues in the world. This is the inevitable result of human beings pursuing a better quality of life and materials. If the green design concept ...is used in the design and manufacture of products, the impact of production on the environment will be greatly reduced. Because of this, green product design assessment and improvement activities play an important role in achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals. Product design is the forefront of the entire product development process, and it plays a very critical role. The purpose of this study is to develop a decision-making model for helping decision makers to evaluate and improve the performance of product design systematically. The model combines the design standard of the iF world design guide and multi-attribute decision-making methods. First, the DEMATEL-based analytic network process is used to establish the influential relationship and weights of attributes. Next, the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno with aspiration-level method is used to obtain the gap between each evaluation attribute and the aspiration level of each design. Finally, this evaluation result uses the influential network relationship map (INRM) to propose various improvement strategies with causal influence. This study uses products from a Taiwanese furniture design company as an empirical case, which is a leading brand and benchmark in Taiwan’s furniture industry. The research results show that the proposed model can help decision makers to choose the most appropriate design scheme (i.e., the design with the smallest gap from expectations); designers can also improve the gap between product design and expectations.
Evaluation of key nodes is a hot issue in social networks. Existing research primarily evaluates the importance of nodes in social networks based on centrality metrics, neglecting the node's own ...attributes. After analyzing the topology attributes and the basic attributes of nodes, this article proposes a key nodes evaluation method for social networks, which is based on analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and improved Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), termed AE-VIKOR. Considering global attributes, local attributes, and positional attributes of nodes, three evaluation metrics are constructed. The subjective and objective weights are computed by AHP and entropy weight method, respectively. The comprehensive weights of metrics are determined by combination weighting method based on square sums of distance. Due to the excessive weight of specific metrics and excessive difference in data distribution, the computation of individual regret value depends too much on a single metric in VIKOR method, individual regret value is optimized by weighted sum of closeness between the scheme to be evaluated and the negative ideal scheme. Multimetric evaluation schemes are ranked to achieve the evaluation of key nodes. Experiments on two real social network datasets show that the key nodes evaluated by AE-VIKOR have stronger information spread ability and more fans than the ones of the existing methods. In addition, the validity of the three metrics and the two improvements on the VIKOR method are verified by ablation experiments.
Taiwanese National Park Headquarters employ advanced information technologies to attract travellers, researchers, and other visitors, but it is likely that not all Headquarters have clear knowledge ...about how successful their websites are. This study proposes an effective model for evaluating national park websites. The model first applies the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) to cope with the interdependencies between evaluation criteria. Next, it uses the Analytic Network Process (ANP) to compute weights for each criterion. Finally, it uses the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) to rank Taiwanese national park websites. Overall, the results show that each national park website must be improved in order to become a high quality website. Furthermore, the weight-variance analysis suggests managerial actions based on two-dimensional maps for improving website quality. Therefore, this study not only provides a comprehensive and systematic approach that quantitatively measures a website's overall performance, but also contributes to practical applications in terms of providing worthwhile recommendations for building an ideal website.
Traditionally, package tour (PT) agencies assumed that tourists only pay attention to the PT's price, so PT service providers often offer limited package tours based on options and prices. Nowadays, ...PT service providers face the difficult challenge of how to offer diverse PTs to satisfy tourists' needs based on a reasonable price. This study proposes an evaluation model of package tours based on diverse resources and transportation means. This study proposes a two-dimensional evaluation framework to analyse tourists' needs regarding package tour services and the proposed model could be applied to plan mass customized package tours based on the portfolio of value satisfaction index (VSI) and the price satisfaction index (PSI). The study also proposes that mass customized package tours can improve the traditional tour planning method through a portfolio of diverse tourism resources. Moreover, the study integrates the different choices of traffic and transportation tools, as well as tourism resources and providers in six portfolios of package tours in the Nantou county of Taiwan. These six package tours can be planned through three traffic and transportation tools (tourist coach, railroad, and minibus) and four tourism resources (natural experiences, cultural exploration, shopping and cuisine, and event participation).
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test the 5GP concept with measurement of the performance of Busan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai ports, employing a hybrid method of consistent fuzzy ...preference relation (CFPR), VIsekriterijumska Optimizacija i KOmpromisno Resenje (VIKOR) and PROMETHEE.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors developed the concept of the fifth generation ports (5GPs), and apply CFPR, VIKOR and preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations (PROMETHEE) to evaluate the 5GPs.
Findings
The performance of the ports of Hong Kong and Singapore is close to meet the definition of 5GP criteria. On the contrary, ports of Busan and Shanghai are still behind the 5GP stage in light of the majority of the evaluation criteria’s performance.
Research limitations/implications
This paper studies four ports. More empirical tests are needed to verify the applicability of the 5GP concept toward other ports.
Practical implications
The findings provided port managers with the insight of how to improve their port to meet the criteria of 5GP.
Social implications
New criteria and higher expectations of existing requirements present challenges to port managers for a need to raise the bar of service standards and develop new competencies.
Originality/value
The authors developed the concept of the 5GPs. Newly developed 5GP contributes to expanding the concepts of first to fourth generation ports developed by UNCTAD.
With the expansion of urbanization caused by the growth of population and industrial activities, the urban/city and suburban areas are facing a variety of environmental threats. Although more ...research and urban policy has advocated and practiced the development of green infrastructure (GI) to support urban sustainable environment, the evaluation framework for the development of GI for promoting environmental sustainability is still insufficient. Moreover, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) commonly applied in published literature, makes an unrealistic assumption of independent relationships among dimensions/criteria in decision making for satisfying the real-world problem. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to construct the evaluation framework, including four dimensions and related ten criteria, using a new hybrid-modified multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) model for developing and improving the GI for promoting environmental sustainability. This MADM model is combined with three different methodologies of MADM, including the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) for constructing the influential network relation map (INRM) to explore the complex influential inter-relationships and DEMATEL based on Analytic Network Process (DANP) for determining the influential weights with the VIse Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) for evaluating and presenting improvement strategies for six different GIs. The empirical study indicates that DEMATEL and DANP Results suggest that decision-makers should pay more attention to the improvement of Design (D4) and Materials (D2) in terms of dimensions when utilizing the GI to promote environmental sustainability. Because these dimensions are enhanced, Species (D1) and Energy (D3) will be improved in synchronization. From the perspective of criteria, five are key core criteria and need to be focused on first: increasing the green coverage rate (B9), utilizing sustainable materials (B4), using ecological engineering (B8), shaping species biodiversity (B1), and reducing energy consumption (B5). Modified VIKOR reveals that “grass swales” are a comparatively better choice among six GIs for promoting environmental sustainability toward achieving the aspiration level. Therefore, this MADM model is beneficial to provide a more convincing assessment framework and improvement strategies for the development of GI for promoting environmental sustainability. As a result, these modified MADM models can be shown more conveniently and reasonably than traditional methods such as traditional AHP or ANP method.
•Providing an evaluation framework for green infrastructure (GI) for promoting environmentally sustainability.•A new hybrid modified multiple attribute decision-making (MADM) model is presented.•Considering the influential relationship among dimension/criteria improves the un-realistic shortcoming.•The result of DEMATEL and DANP indicate that Design (D2) and Materials (D2) and relevant criteria should be focused.•Modified VIKOD suggests that “Grass swales” have better performance among six GI.
In these days of growing awareness on Renewable Energy Sources and their benefits, there is a major issue that needs to be considered, which is selection of suitable Hybrid Renewable Energy System ...(HRES) among the vast multitude of choices. In this paper, multiple Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques are proposed to select the best among a choice of six HRES Systems using different criteria including but not limited to net present cost (NPC), operating cost, renewability fraction, CO2 & NOx emissions etc. The criteria weights are obtained using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on the preference order of the criteria. The decision matrix is obtained from the statistical data of the different HRES and using different MCDA techniques such as Multi-Objective Optimization on the Basis of Ratio Analysis (MOORA), Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR), rankings are given to the HRES systems based on their closeness to the ideal solution. These rankings are helpful in the selection of suitable HRES configuration for normal household purposes. Since cost aspects are given greater preference, the obtained rankings lean more towards economically affordable solutions without compromising on the number of units generated.
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