title: Multi-stage ranking of emergency technology alternatives for water source pollution accidents using a fuzzy group decision making tool.
abstract: Due to the increasing number of unexpected water source pollution events, selection of the most appropriate disposal technology for a specific pollution scenario is of crucial importance to the security of urban water supplies. However, the formulation of the optimum option is considerably difficult owing to the substantial uncertainty of such accidents. In this research, a multi-stage technical screening and evaluation tool is proposed to determine the optimal technique scheme, considering the areas of pollutant elimination both in drinking water sources and water treatment plants. In stage 1, a CBR-based group decision tool was developed to screen available technologies for different scenarios. Then, the threat degree caused by the pollution was estimated in stage 2 using a threat evaluation system and was partitioned into four levels. For each threat level, a corresponding set of technique evaluation criteria weights was obtained using Group-G1. To identify the optimization alternatives corresponding to the different threat levels, an extension of TOPSIS, a multi-criteria interval-valued trapezoidal fuzzy decision making technique containing the four arrays of criteria weights, to a group decision environment was investigated in stage 3. The effectiveness of the developed tool was elaborated by two actual thallium-contaminated scenarios associated with different threat levels.
authors.affiliation: School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.
authors.forename: Jianhua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.affiliation: School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China; State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China. Electronic address: hgdmxl@163.com.
authors.forename: Xianlin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.affiliation: School of Municipal and Environmental Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China; State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: You
keywords: Drinking water source; Fuzzy TOPSIS; Generalized interval-valued trapezoidal fuzzy number; Multi-criteria group decision making