title: Assessment of health-care waste disposal methods using a VIKOR-based fuzzy multi-criteria decision making method.
abstract: Nowadays selection of the appropriate treatment method in health-care waste (HCW) management has become a challenge task for the municipal authorities especially in developing countries. Assessment of HCW disposal alternatives can be regarded as a complicated multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem which requires consideration of multiple alternative solutions and conflicting tangible and intangible criteria. The objective of this paper is to present a new MCDM technique based on fuzzy set theory and VIKOR method for evaluating HCW disposal methods. Linguistic variables are used by decision makers to assess the ratings and weights for the established criteria. The ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator is utilized to aggregate individual opinions of decision makers into a group assessment. The computational procedure of the proposed framework is illustrated through a case study in Shanghai, one of the largest cities of China. The HCW treatment alternatives considered in this study include "incineration", "steam sterilization", "microwave" and "landfill". The results obtained using the proposed approach are analyzed in a comparative way.
authors.affiliation: School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, PR China; Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan.
authors.forename: Hu-Chen
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D008506:Medical Waste; D017744:Medical Waste Disposal / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D008506:Medical Waste; D017744:Medical Waste Disposal
keywords: Fuzzy sets; Health-care waste management; OWA operator; VIKOR method