Fuzzy-ANP Approach for Environmental Risk Assessment of Product Designs

Abstract

Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) has been widely used to solve many complicated multiple criteria decision (MCDM) problems, as discussed in the previous chapters. However, one limitation of AHP is the assumption of independence among various factors. The dynamic nature of many MCDM problems determines that factors considered in the decision problem are often not independent. The decision will mostly affect the performance of not just one, but other factors. The dynamic characteristics and complexity of the problem environment would require intensive and robust analysis in the decision making process. To address this issue, the ANP is used to take critical factors and their interdependencies into consideration. Nevertheless, ANP does not allow for uncertainty among factors. In fact, the uncertainty associated with the problem, or the lack of environmental data, is the main challenge to many MCDM. Thereby, fuzzy logic, which can be employed to deal with uncertain parameters and information, is introduced in the pairwise comparison of ANP to make up for this deficiency in conventional ANP.