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Environmental impact assessment (EIA) by using the Fuzzy Delphi Folchi (FDF) method (case study: Shahrood cement plant, Iran)

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Abstract

Environmental concern has become one of the major global issues that affect all nations individually and/or collectively. One of the most important methods for environmental impact assessment (EIA) is Folchi method. An improvement for Folchi method in EIA is done in this paper by using fuzzy method. A fuzzy expert semi-quantitative methodology is designed to assess the EIA within the Folchi framework. The proposed fuzzy method has the advantage of allowing consideration of uncertainties in the Folchi method in comparison with classic expert semi-quantitative method that only unique codes are used to quantify the effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component. Since the fuzzy system is used to minimize subjectivity of the weights which are computed in the Folchi method, the “Fuzzy Delphi” and “Folchi” methods were merged. Due to the high potential of cement plants in the creation of environmental impact, environment impact assessment of the development of cement plants is very important. To test the proposed method, the Shahrood cement plant was selected as a case study. According to the results, the contamination generated by the plant, especially for environmental components such as air quality, soil of the area, area landscape, area usage, and ecology, is more significant than other environmental components. The newly proposed approach is an efficient tool in EIA and hence can be operational in humanistic decision-making systems with existence of uncertainty, vagueness, and imprecision.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mining, Petroleum and Geophysics Engineering, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran

    Amir Saffari, Mohammad Ataei, Farhang Sereshki & Mostafa Naderi

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  1. Amir Saffari
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Correspondence to Amir Saffari.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16.

Table 7 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 1
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Table 8 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 2
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Table 9 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 3
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Table 10 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 4
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Table 11 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 5
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Table 12 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 6
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Table 13 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 7
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Table 14 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 8
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Table 15 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 9
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Table 16 Effect of each impacting factor on each designed environmental component for cement plants according to opinions of expert 10
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Saffari, A., Ataei, M., Sereshki, F. et al. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) by using the Fuzzy Delphi Folchi (FDF) method (case study: Shahrood cement plant, Iran). Environ Dev Sustain 21, 817–860 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-017-0063-1

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