No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
A Hybrid Type-2 Fuzzy Performance Evaluation Model for Public Transport Services
Abstract
This study provides a framework through customer satisfaction surveys performed by the Directorate of Istanbul Electricity, Tramway and Tunnel Enterprises (IETT) in 2017 with 3350 participants. The main contribution of this study is to create a type-2 fuzzy set multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) framework consisting of the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) in order to join the opinions of professionals with those of passengers with the aim of making a precise assessment on passenger satisfaction and focus areas. In general, these types of MCDM methods are used to choose the best option between given scenarios. The difference here is the application of this framework to find the actual performances of the already applied decisions by including them in the survey questions, rather than finding the best among several alternatives. The model determines the performances of pre-determined criteria by cross-checking them with expert opinions and survey data, providing a better investment strategy for local bodies and useful insights for both city planners and public transportation agencies in general. The aim of developing the model is to compare the criteria value, given by the experts, with the passenger evaluations for the same criteria to check for consistency, which shows us the level of agreement between passenger needs and expert opinions. Our results show that most passengers using IETT services are pleased with the punctuality of buses and information provided.
... Extensive research on the views of experts in related fields is essential. Meanwhile, a scientific and classical approach has to be selected, which can refer to the existing evaluation system establishment methods (Bilisik et al., 2013;Cai et al., 2018;Kim et al., 2022;Lu et al., 2016;Ozturk, 2021). The humanistic assessment system for city tunnels is essential to quantitatively examine construction and maintenance's effect on crucial aspects of human-centric performance. ...
Humanistic factors play an essential role in the city tunnel assessment. The study proposed a systematic literature review to sort out the major factors of human-centric infrastructure and determine their importance ranking by expert questionnaire and analytic hierarchy process (AHP). On this basis, a multi-criteria framework for the humanistic assessment system for city tunnels (HASCT) was developed and demonstrated by the AHP-fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method. The assessment indexes, weight system, primary and guiding assessment model of HASCT were studied in detail. Humanistic assessment of tunnels involves the relevant theories and methods of fuzzy-based comprehensive evaluation and requires the cooperation and participation of many departments. The scoring guideline makes it possible to quantify the humanistic attributes of tunnels and ensure the usability and objectivity of HASCT. To this end, the practice of the Boao Tunnel in Hangzhou was implemented, verified, and analyzed with HASCT. The investigation results of experts, as stakeholders, depict the importance and priority order for further developing the humanistic target in tunnel design and construction. Results indicate that safety is still the most critical issue for human-centric tunnels, followed by comfort, and factors such as aesthetic value are relatively neglected.
... For instance, Wang et al. [36] included polygonal fuzzy sets to assess logistics transportation. Additionally, Ö ztürk [37] applied type-2 fuzzy set MCDM to find performance of PT services' applications by assessing customer satisfaction surveys. They found that the performance criteria such as punctuality and providing traveler information are well enough to satisfy passenger happiness. ...
Rail transit systems, one of the important public transportation (PT) systems, are widespread in large cities to satisfy passengers or commuters for their daily trips. However, rail transportation (RT) investments are costly, and the budgets are minimal. Thus assessing RT systems in big cities play a crucial role in deciding on the best investment. In this study, for the first time, a two-stage fuzzy set is used among the multi-criteria decision-making(MCDM) studies in the area of transportation. The proposed method is a unique technique integrating the Ana-lytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Vise KriterijumskaOptimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) techniques with an extension of Pythagorean fuzzy sets. In this manner, datasets from the observations of three rail lines in Antalya, one of the largest cities in Turkey, are applied to the proposed method. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process(FAHP), a commonly used MCDM method, is used to weighting four main criteria and thirteen sub-factors. AHP is strengthened by interval-valued Pythagorean fuzzy numbers (IVPFNs). The Fuzzy VIKOR (FVIKOR)approach is then applied for the prioritization of three rail line alternatives. Results are achieved by analyzing not only real RT service observations, also actual RT expenditures or costs. Consequently, the uncertainty in results is thus minimized. Outcomes of the case study reveal the most serviceable RT line in the city evaluating the main criteria, namely economy, comfort, environment, and safety. Therefore, the proposed approach methodologically contributes to adopting a new insight into the integration of MCDM methods with fuzzy set.
... However, the computation time increases considerably when too many criteria are involved in the IT2FAHP. Therefore, it is recommended that the criteria weights be obtained by FAHP and the ranking of alternatives by other MCDM methods (Kılıç and Kaya,2015;Şahin and Pehlivan, 2017;Öztürk, 2021). ...
Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is a process of evaluating and ranking the various alternatives with respect to the criteria using subjective judgments of decision maker(s). Since the classical MCDM methods cannot deal with imprecise and uncertain information in the decision-making process, MCDM methods based on Type-1 fuzzy sets are suggested. Afterwards, Type-2 fuzzy set characterized by a fuzzy membership function was introduced as an extension to Type-1 fuzzy sets. Interval Type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) are the most widely used Type-2 fuzzy sets. Various MCDM methods based on IT2FSs have been proposed and applied on different fields. In this chapter, two integrated methods are introduced by using AHP, COPRAS, and VIKOR methods based on IT2FSs. The proposed integrated methods are carried out to evaluate life quality of 28 European Union countries and another six countries, Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, and Kosovo with respect to 30 subjective criteria.
... Kamu alanında hizmet üreten kurumların verimli olarak işlevsellik kazanması yöneticilerinin yetkin kişilerden oluşması ile doğrudan ilişkilidir. Çalışanların performansı tüm kurumlarda olduğu gibi kamuya hizmet veren şirketlerde de müşteri memnuniyetinin iyi bir noktaya ulaşması açısından önem arz etmektedir (Öztürk, 2021;Kavak & Çelik, 2020). Kamu şirketlerinin işe alım ve mevcut personeli yükseltme ile ilgili yaklaşımları özel sektöre nazaran farklılıklar içermektedir. ...
Efficient management of companies that provide services in the public sector is important in terms of both sustainability and preventing public loss. Since the priority of public companies is not to make a profit, a perception that it is unnecessary for companies to be managed by professionals causes the continuity of the service produced to be interrupted. Employee performance plays an important role in public companies, as it does in every company. For this reason, it is important that the scientific methods used by commercial companies in the selection of personnel should also be used by public companies. In this study, it was tried to create a method and an understanding for assignments to these positions in addition to encouraging the merit to come to the fore in assignments to immersive positions such as management in public companies. According to the general opinion, working time is important as a measure in the appointment of personnel in the public sector. Even in some assignments, working time is the main must. In this study, although the working time is one of the criteria required for an appointment, it does not mean anything by itself. The study was resolved with AHP based PROMETHEE.
One of the most vital forms of public transportation, particularly in large, populated areas, is rail transit. In order to improve the infrastructure of the railway public transportation systems, integration and adaptation of new technologies are of great importance. Therefore, the technological assessment of the most popular Tram, Subway, and Marmaray alternatives of Istanbul's train transit is covered in this chapter. First, expert interviews are done in the chapter once the criteria are established, and Modified Delphi approach is then used for consolidation. Subsequently, Interval Type-2 Fuzzy AHP is applied for obtaining importance weights of transport technology criteria. A sensitivity analysis is performed to show the applicability and reliability of the proposed methodology. Overall, the results show that the suggested model is reliable and can be used broadly in similar evaluation problems.
As an alternate mode of transportation, the use of shared bicycle and scooter systems, which are now being brought to the forefront under the term micromobility, has recently been increasing. Among them, electric scooters called e-scooters have started to be preferred frequently due to their ease of use. With this study, the factors to be considered for the adaptation of e-scooters have been determined and an e-scooter situation analysis has been carried out for Turkiye. For this reason, the factors brought together within the scope of the SWOT analysis have been examined and their priority degrees have been calculated. The factors considered in the SWOT analysis have been weighted with the interval type-2 fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP). As a result, the most important and least important factors have been determined.
Improving public transport performance can encourage motorists to change their attitude and behavior. This improvement should bring the quality of service and attractiveness of public transport to counterbalance the benefits of the private car and to increase the total number of passengers. In this paper, the performance analysis is conducted in three main stages. The first step in this process is continuously introduced to adjust the sets of indicators and to measure the performance of public transport operators. The indicators selected are related to efficiency, economic and financial efficiency, pertinence and quality of service. With these indicators, managers can quickly identify the performance and implement effective and efficient public transport systems in Tunisian cities. Regarding the second step, we assessed the performance of public transport operators in Tunisia. The multi-criteria evidential reasoning provides the public transport authority with tools to control operators at all levels, to improve the performance of the public transport system and in this case all public transport operators can know their positions in relation to existing local companies. The third step is the development of performance risk management plans. To achieve this goal, we have developed an approach that allows predicting the possible evolution of the performance situation and classifying the progress made in the public transport sector year by year. The results obtained show that the public transport in Tunisia is not attractive. The overall figures of economic and financial efficiency reveal a relatively low performance and the vast majority of cities have a defective public transport network.
Studies related to transportation planning and development have been in the center of activities of many researchers in the past decades. Road congestions issues, economic problems, health problems and environmental problems are some examples of complex problems that can be caused by urban and public transportation in big cities. Evaluating urban and public transportation systems could help to reach effective solutions to overcome these issues. This article presents a short bibliographic review of some recent studies on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approaches for evaluating urban and public transportation systems. To this aim, Scopus was chosen as the database for making a search on journal articles. Scopus is trusted by major institutions in the world, and all journals covered in this database are inspected for sufficiently high quality each year. The search was made on the journal articles from 2017 to 2022 (July). The analyses presented in this study show that the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is the most used method, which has been applied to different studies in the field of urban and public transportation systems based on MCDM approaches. According to the analysis of the number of articles, Turkey is ranked 1st among different countries, and "Budapest University of Technology and Economics" (Hungary) is 1st in the ranking of institutions. Moreover, most of the articles have been published within the "social sciences" subject area. The recent trend in different studies on urban and public transportation systems shows the importance of using MCDM approaches in this field. Moreover, noticeable employment of fuzzy sets in several studies is a point that can shows the significant role of uncertainty in dealing with this type of problems.
In recent years, with both technological advances and the effect of globalization, businesses have entered a very intense competition. In this harsh competitive environment, customer satisfaction has become a critical concept. Firms implement costs reducing strategies in order to increase profitability levels and gain competitive advantage in the market. Researches show that a significant ratio of the cost of a product is derived from the transport activities. Therefore, it has become important for companies to find the optimal route during transportation. In this study, it is addressed as capacity constrained vehicle routing. First, a deterministic model is proposed for the addressed problem. Second, in accordance with real life conditions, a fuzzy linear programming model has been developed in case of the vehicle capacities are uncertain. The Verdegay approach has been adopted for the fuzzy linear programming model. The proposed model was implemented to a real life problem in the food sector. The results are compared with the results of a deterministic model and they show that the fuzzy linear programming model proposed in this study gives cost effective results in uncertain environment.
Prioritizing the development of public transit and enhancing its attractiveness is an important way to solve the problem of urban traffic congestion and achieve sustainable development. To improve the service quality and overall opera-tional efficiency of urban public transit, an evaluation index system related to the comprehensive experience of pas-sengers, service supply quality of public transit enterprises, and supervision of management departments was intro-duced from both the demand and the supply of public transit travel services. Based on the data distribution characteris-tics of the boxplot in statistics, the evaluation level and corresponding value range of each index were determined, and the comprehensive weight of the index was determined using the linear weighting method combining the analytic hierarchy process and the entropy weight method, so as to reduce the influence of single weighting method on the evaluation results of comprehensive service quality of public transit. An evaluation method of public transit compre-hensive service quality based on the extension cloud model was established. The evaluation results of the model were obtained by calculating the cloud affiliation and comprehensive certainty, and a reliability factor was used to test the evaluation results, which solved the problem of randomness and fuzziness in the process of comprehensive service quality evaluation of public transportation and made the evaluation results closer to the reality. Finally, the estab-lished comprehensive evaluation model was applied to a city for example analysis, and the corresponding evaluation level was obtained as good. The value of the reliability factor in the model was less than 0.01, indicating that the model has good applicability and a certain application value for the comprehensive service quality evaluation of public transit. The evaluation method fully considered a variety of evaluation indicators, specified the evaluation level of comprehensive service quality of public transit, and the evaluation results provide a theoretical basis for public transport enterprise to make targeted improvement measures.
This study proposes a three-stage holistic methodology combining an interval type-2 fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (IT2F-AHP) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) to deal with the performance evaluation problems encountered in fuzzy decision environments. In the first stage, prospective inputs and outputs are determined by field studies. The second stage employs IT2F-AHP to identify the most appropriate performance indicators based on vague expert judgements. Finally, DEA is applied to the decision-making units (DMUs) based on the selected set of input and output measures. The proposed methodology proves its merit on a case study addressing the performance of real estate investment trusts (REITs) in Turkey during their 10-year journey of trading on Borsa Istanbul (BIST). The results demonstrate that the average scores for technical, pure technical and scale efficiencies are 66%, 80% and 80%, respectively. Considering the technical efficiency scores, Turkish REITs could have reduced their input factors by an average of 34%. The findings also reveal that the majority of Turkish REITs suffer from economies of scale and could have improved their performance by expansion.
The improvement in public transit is one of the basic and essential pillars to promote sustainable urban and metropolitan mobility everywhere. Algeria´s transportation system primarily relies on private vehicle, which causes innumerable problems such as congestion, emissions, traffic accidents, social inequalities, gender inequalities, and deterioration of the environment. Given that, the Algerian Government has recently carried out some transportation projects such as the Algiers metro and tramway service to promote collective public transportation in the country. Therefore, it becomes essential to provide public administrations and technicians with relevant information and efficient analytical tools to help enhance and develop this mass transit. In this line, the first Customer Satisfaction Survey was designed and implemented in November 2014 at the three railways transit services of Algiers: the light rail, the underground heavy rail (both started into operation in 2011) and the commuter rail. Thanks to this survey instrument, users’ profiles and travel patterns were found out. Moreover, an analytical framework based on a principal component analysis and an ordered probit model identified service quality dimensions and their impact on users’ overall satisfaction. In addition, the effect of socio-economic variables and travel patterns on the previously identified quality dimensions was obtained through multiple linear regression models. The results presented in this paper could help Algerian transport authorities towards elaborate specific proposals to increase transit ridership.
The use of participatory techniques in the field of transport is coming to the forefront recently. In this frame, eight co-creation workshops and five online crowdsourcing campaigns took place in Thessaloniki, Southern Tuscany, Rotterdam/The Hague, and Frankfurt, from which many innovative ideas to enhance Public Transport were generated by citizens. A simple list of innovations would not be very useful for Public Transport Operators, as they cannot implement all of them at once. There was an obvious need for their ranking and this is the purpose of this paper. The ranking was realized with the most used Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis method in transportation research, i.e. the Analytic Hierarchy Process, using three criteria: Feasibility, Utility, and Innovativeness. An online questionnaire was distributed to experts, using a modified snowball sampling technique, which yielded 97 completed questionnaires. Utility (42.90%) was found to be the most important criterion, followed by Feasibility (40.10%), and Innovativeness (17.00%). Four lists of innovations were derived, ranked with respect to a) all three examined criteria, b) Feasibility, c) Utility, and d) Innovativeness. The highest ranked innovation for a) and c) was found to be Mobility as a Service and platform with real-time travel, comfort, and multi-modal information; for b) City marketing from a Public Transport perspective; and for d) Advanced e-ticketing system. The results revealed which of the innovations are the most promising and provide valuable insight into how to integrate innovation with Public Transport to make it more attractive. Public Transport Operators may use the results according to the peculiarities of their city and the importance they give to Feasibility, Utility, and Innovativeness.
Urban rail transit has played an important role in big and crowded cities. Providing services with high levels of customer satisfaction is essential in order to increase the sharing rate of urban rail transit and to reduce traffic congestion by shifting people away from private car use. Therefore, it is of great significance to improve the customer satisfaction of urban rail transit. This paper presents an intuitionistic fuzzy group decision model to evaluate the customer satisfaction of urban rail transit. An evaluation indicator system including seven categories of indicators is established to measure passengers’ satisfaction. The overall customer satisfaction level of the urban rail transit lines is obtained by the intuitionistic fuzzy entropy and intuitionistic fuzzy weighted average (IFWA) operator. The intuitionistic fuzzy entropy is used to solve attribute weights and IFWA operator is used to solve the information aggregation. Drawing on Tianjin urban rail transit lines as a case study, the detailed analyses were conducted to evaluate the overall customer satisfaction level of five urban rail transit lines and as such suggesting remedy strategies. The results can help urban rail transit operation company to improve the service quality of urban rail transit.
To better sustain passengers’ loyalty towards bus service, this paper addressed the modeling of the public transit loyalty by the use of structural equation model. As a novel hypothesis, the emotional value was considered to have effects on the perceived value of bus services in this study, which reflected the degree of passengers’ emotional dependence on the public transit. Specifically, in order to better assess the loyalty, seven unobserved variables were measured to construct the structural model, namely, “service guarantee,” “operational services and efficiency,” “emotional value,” “perceived value,” “expectation,” “satisfaction,” and “loyalty.” The goodness-of-fit of the model was estimated and evaluated by using the survey data harvested from Xiamen, China. Besides, the index score of variables was also computed to help determine targeted approaches to better improve the level of bus service. The results indicated that the time cost and the monetary cost actually had no effects on the perceived value of users in the case study. At the same time, however, it also proved that passengers’ emotional value towards the public transit indeed affected passengers’ perception of the service value. In addition, whether users’ perceived value was as expected determined how much passengers satisfied with the service. Regarding the index score of variables, it indicated a great dissatisfaction of passengers towards the current bus service. Unexpectedly, the score of loyalty even still retained a relatively high level, which reflected continue-to-use willingness of passengers. It implied that being subject to economic conditions and other factors, passengers were captive and had to continue relying on the public transit, in spite of their dissatisfaction. As for the improvement direction of bus services, targeted approaches should be determined to improve the quality of bus service, regarding the aspects of “condition of facilities in the bus,” “driving stability and comfort,” “vehicle speed,” and “safety.”
As an important part of urban public transport, bus service quality is an important factor affecting the choice of passenger travel mode. This paper constructs a set of satisfaction evaluation indicator systems from the perspective of passenger perception, covering the whole travel process. It is composed of 6 first-level indexes (timeliness, safety, convenience, comfort, reliability and economy) and 21 second-level indexes. Considering the scale of bus service in Beijing, this research carried out a stratified sampling on 100 bus lines and collected 3012 field questionnaire surveys. The basic information of the bus routes investigated, demographic questions and their opinions of the satisfaction of the bus service were all recorded in the questionnaire. After testing the reliability and validity of the indicator system, the paper proposes a satisfaction evaluation model weighted by the related coefficient. The results show that overall satisfaction score is 78.2 and the proportion of bus passengers who are satisfied with the bus service nearly 70%. Multivariate analysis of variance methods were employed to evaluate the satisfaction influencing factors. Conclusions can be drawn that the satisfaction score of timeliness is lowest, which is mainly influenced by three factors: the passenger’s age, travel purpose and time. The research provides positive contributions toward normalizing performance evaluation for public transportation and enhancing the sustainable development of bus.
This paper presents a case study using Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method to identify urban public transport users’ needs and requests and to improve service quality in urban public passenger transport in Belgrade. In order to determine users’ satisfaction, a direct interview – survey a sample of 15000 of urban public passenger transport system users, according to the defined questionnaire has been performed. Results of these interviews are used as input in the first stage of QFD method. An overall unit of eight features and a total of 48 sub-features were defined, which describes all aspects of quality of system and services in urban public passenger transport. The results show that for maximizing effects of quality of service improvement and satisfying customers’ requirements, the public transport service providers and managers in Belgrade should focus primarily on the service reliability and vehicle elements. The two most important quality of service sub-features in urban public passenger transport system in Belgrade based on frequency of statements of users was regularity with 4896 (32.64%) and vehicle comfort (not crowded vehicles) with 3446 (22.97%) statements. Based on the service features analysis within the house of quality, it was defined that the biggest influence is generated through system functioning parameters (reliability): frequency with relative importance 22.0%, staff (drivers) with relative importance 14.0% and headway with relative importance 13.0%. Based on absolute importance the greatest importance should be assigned to vehicle frequency – rank 1, staff (drivers) – rank 2 and headway – rank 3.
Having an appropriate and advanced analytical framework is essential for transport service managers to optimize resource allocation to improve customer satisfaction. This study proposes a novel analytical framework, the “Importance-Performance-Impact Analysis” (IPIA), which aims to overcome several conceptual and methodological shortcomings associated with Importance–Performance Analysis (IPA). The IPIA framework further integrates advanced analytical techniques, such as Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN), Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and Analytic Network Process (ANP). We illustrate the application the new, integrated framework in one of the ‘Big Four’ airlines in China. IPIA Table and IPIA Matrix help transportation managers to allocate resources better than IPA in order to improve customer satisfaction.
Providing a high quality of service in public transportation is essential to reduce dissatisfactions stemming from traffic congestion and noise. Public transport providers need to find ways to dilute the effects of immoderate use of private cars in big cities while maintaining a sufficient level of customer satisfaction. This study aimed to identify the key service quality (SQ) factors that drive passenger satisfaction in Istanbul’s rail transit (RT) system using data obtained from an extensive survey conducted by the Istanbul Public Transportation Co. A total of 11,116 passengers who used rail transport from May 15–June 3, 2012, and June 17–July 3, 2013, were interviewed in person. The relative importance of the SQ factors was assessed so that service provision could be prioritized and the enhancement of passenger satisfaction can be achieved employing several social choice techniques. The results indicate that, from an overall perspective, waiting time, crowdedness in cars, and fare are the SQ factors that best reflect the public good.
Understanding the motivations underlying transport mode choice is of paramount importance for interventions directed towards travel behavior change. This study presents a model of a comprehensive psychological process on individual’s public transit use decision-making, which is accomplished by the integration of the theory of planned behavior and the customer satisfaction theory. The empirical examination supports the validity of this integrated framework to model public transit use behavior, with a set of hypothesized cause-and-effect relationships among the concerned psychological constructs being confirmed. This model is expected to provide useful implications for transport policies in order to retain the current passengers as well as to attract new users in the future, e.g., how to satisfy passengers with their expected quality of public transit service.
The main goal of this review paper is to provide a systematic review of Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) techniques in regard to transportation systems problems. This study reviewed a total of 89 papers, published from 1993 to 2015, from 39 high-ranking journals; most of which were related to transportation science and were extracted from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Papers were classified into 10 main application areas and nine transport infrastructure. Furthermore, papers were categorized based on the author(s) and year, name of the journal in which they were published, technique and approach, author(s) nationality, application area and scope, study purpose, gap and research problem and results and outcome. The results of this study indicated that more papers on MCDM in 2013 than in any other year. AHP and Fuzzy-AHP methods in the individual methods and hybrid MCDM and fuzzy MCDM in the integrated methods were ranked as the first and second methods in use, respectively. The Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice was the most significant journal in this study, with 13 publications on the topic. Finally, service quality was ranked as the first application area and airline industry was ranked as the first transport infrastructure that applied MCDM techniques.
First published online: 18 Dec 2015
This study was conducted to profile customers according to the level of satisfaction with the service attributes of maritime public transport provided by Seabus Service Company (SSC), the sole provider of maritime transport in Istanbul. Such analysis needs to be conducted by considering market segments in terms of maritime transportation usage and post purchase behavior. This was accomplished by conducting quantitative research through face-to-face surveys of SSC passengers. According to the results by multivariate data analysis, including factor analysis and cluster analysis, six segments are revealed in terms of customer satisfaction level with the maritime service attributes. Moreover, there are significant differences among the segments in terms of usage frequency (travel frequency in this study), age and education level. Different strategies for different customer segments within the maritime passenger market to increase customer usage and satisfaction of maritime transportation in Istanbul are suggested from the findings. Thus, this paper provides guidelines for the Turkish Maritime Authorities as to how to expand maritime transportation usage in Istanbul, which is not only the largest city and the most crucial trade center of Turkey but also has the highest share of passenger maritime transportation in the country.
First published online 24 September 2015
MCDM is considered as a complex decision-making tool involving both quantitative and qualitative factors. In recent years, several MCDM techniques and approaches have been suggested to choosing the optimal probably options. The purpose of this paper is to review systematically the applications and methodologies of the multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques and approaches. This study reviewed a total of 393 papers published from 2000 to 2014 in more than 120 peer reviewed journals (extracted from Web of Science). According to experts’ opinions, these papers were grouped into 15 fields. Furthermore, these papers were categorized based on authors, publication date, name of journals, methods, tools, and type of research (MCDM utilizing research, MCDM developing research, and MCDM proposing research). The results of this study indicated that, in 2013, scholars have published papers more than other years. In addition, AHP method in the individual tools and hybrid MCDM in the integrated methods were ranked as the first and second methods in use. Additionally, European Journal of Operational Research as the first journal with 70 publications was the significant journal in this study; finally, energy, environmental and sustainability were ranked as the first area that have applied DM techniques and approaches.
A transit service quality study based on cluster analysis was performed to extract detailed customer profiles sharing similar appraisals concerning the service. This approach made it possible to detect specific requirements and needs regarding the quality of service and to personalize the marketing strategy. Data from various customer satisfaction surveys conducted by the Transport Consortium of Granada (Spain) were analyzed to distinguish these groups; a decision tree methodology was used to identify the most important service quality attributes influencing passengers’ overall evaluations. Cluster analysis identified four groups of passengers. Comparisons using decision trees among the overall sample of all users and the different groups of passengers identified by cluster analysis led to the discovery of differences in the key attributes encompassed by perceived quality.
Energy is a critical factor to obtain a sustainable development for countries and governments. Selection of the most appropriate energy alternative is a completely critical and a complex decision making problem. In this paper, an integrated multi-criteria decision,making, (MCDM) methodology based on type-2 fuzzy sets is proposed for selection among energy alternatives. Then a roadmap has been created for Turkey. To overcome uncertainties In decision making process, the fuzzy set theory (FST) is suggested. For this aim, two of the most known MCDM methodologies are reconsidered by using type-2 fuzzy sets. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) based on interval type-2 fuzzy sets is constructed and is used to,obtain the weights of the criteria affecting energy alternatives. To rank the energy alternatives, the other MCDM method that is Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is fuzzified by interval type-2 fuzzy sets. The proposed integrated MCDM methodology based on interval type-2 fuzzy sets is applied to obtain a road map of energy policies for Turkey."
As a result of emerging computation technologies, information systems
are developed to support various processes of enterprises. ERP (Enterprise
Resource Planning) has been a leading EIS (Enterprise Information
Systems) application and companies are allocating resources to such new
projects. However, studies report that most of the projects fail or cannot
reach the desired outcomes selecting inappropriate software is represented
as one of the major sources for project failures. This paper focuses
on EIS selection problem which is a multicriteria decision making
(MCDM) problem since it contains various and conflicting criteria. In this
study, a group decision making approach using Analytic Hierarchy Process
(AHP) and Interval type-2 fuzzy sets is used on a real world ERP
selection problem with six criteria and four alternatives. The originality
of the study comes from using interval type-2 fuzzy sets in the decision
problem. By using interval type-2 fuzzy sets for handling fuzzy group
decision-making problems more flexible decisions can be given since
interval type-2 fuzzy sets are more suitable to represent uncertainties than
type-1 fuzzy set.
Customer perception of the quality of service provided by the operator and the level of satisfaction are one of the key parameters to monitor the performance. This paper presents a practical approach for monitoring public transportation system performance by focusing on the passengers’ evaluations. The paper first outlines the development of a systematic framework for an objective and participatory monitoring of transportation systems performance. A Passenger-Oriented Performance IndeX (POPIX) has been developed by using 22 indicators with 6 different measures defined as time, cost, accessibility and transfer, comfort, safety-security and quality of service. The proposed framework allows the investigation of the performance changes of a particular transportation system and enables the performance comparison of different systems directly from the customer point of view. The POPIX methodology has been presented and an example application of the suggested method is provided for the selected Railway Systems. The shifted POPIX concept has also been developed for more reliable trend analyses. The case study highlights that the measures of cost, accessibility and transfer and comfort have lower performance scores and the Metro System performs better than the Tram and Light Rail Systems. © 2014 Faculty of Transport and Traffic Engineering. All rights reserved.
Strategic decisions such as mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures have a strong effect on firm performance. In order to be successful in highly competitive environments firms have to make right and on time strategic decisions. However, the nature of making the right strategic decision is complex and unstructured since there are many factors affecting such decisions. Moreover these factors are usually hard and vague to evaluate numerically. This study tries to develop a multicriteria decision-making model which considers both the complexity and vagueness of strategic decisions. The weights of the factors are determined by interval type-2 Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and then the best strategy is selected by Hesitant Fuzzy TOPSIS using the determined weights. An application to a multinational consumer electronics company is presented.
Service quality (SERVQUAL) is one of the most important factors that increase the usage of public transportation. SERVQUAL improvements can solve many problems such as traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, and energy consumption in any public transportation system (PTS). In this paper, a hybrid fuzzy approach consisting of SERVQUAL, the Delphi method, fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methodologies for the evaluation of SERVQUAL of PTS is presented. The SERVQUAL method is used for classifying the public transportation SERVQUAL evaluation criteria, the Delphi method is used to obtain the evaluations of experts, fuzzy AHP is used to determine the weights of the criteria and fuzzy TOPSIS is used to rank the alternatives. A new linguistic scale is taken into consideration while converting the linguistic evaluations of survey respondents to fuzzy numbers. The proposed approach is applied for the PTS in Istanbul, and the public transportation company that provides the highest customer satisfaction is determined. With this aim, four alternative companies named Istanbul Electric Tramway and Tunnel (IETT), Metrobus, Private Public Transportation Buses and Otobus Inc. are evaluated.
Electric vehiczles are the key to facilitating the transition to low-carbon ‘green’ transport. However, there are concerns with their range and the location of the charging stations which delay a full-fledged adoption of their use. Hence, the electric charging infrastructure in a given region is critical to mitigating those concerns. In this study, an interval type-2 fuzzy set based multi-criteria decision-making method is introduced for selecting the best location for electric charging stations. This method is improved by Simulated Annealing obtaining the best configuration of the parameters of the interval type-2 membership functions along with two different aggregation operators; linguistic weighted sum and average. The proposed overall reusable multi-stage solution approach is applied to a real-world public transport problem of the municipal bus company in Istanbul. The results indicate that the approach indeed improves the model, capturing the associated uncertainties embedded in the interval type-2 membership functions better, leading to a more effective fuzzy system. The experts confirm those observations and that Simulated Annealing improved interval type-2 fuzzy method achieves more reliable results for selecting the best sites for the electric bus charging stations.
The development of wind farm projects requires proper planning and evaluation. Most often, the suitability of locations for siting wind farms is based on the wind resource (i.e. wind speeds) of a location. However, other criteria such as environmental, economic, and social factors are also important during the planning stage at arriving at a robust wind farm siting decision. In this paper, a geographic information system-based model for
wind farm site selection using interval type-2 fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed and implemented to determine the suitable wind farm sites in Nigeria. The model focuses on the use of fuzzy sets to represent expert’s linguistic judgement with the aim of addressing the issues of uncertainty, vagueness and inconsistency in wind farm site selection decision making. The model uses two sets of criteria (weighted and constraint) which are either economic, social, or environmental in evaluating the suitable sites for wind farm development. The results of the study revealed that the best sites for wind farm development are basically located in the Northern part of Nigeria with Bauchi, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Plateau, and Sokoto states being the most suitable locations
for wind farm projects. The suitable area for locating wind farm in the country is evaluated to be approximately 125728.6 km2, out of which about 2650.1 km2 are considered to be extremely suitable for siting a wind farm. This paper could serve as a first-hand scientific information for decision makers and planners in selecting the optimal suitable site for wind farm development. Although, Nigeria is considered as the case study, the methodology can be severally applied to any region in the world.
Importance-performance analysis (IPA) is a common and accepted method used by service industries to improve their service and therefore increase customer satisfaction. In public transportation, it has been adopted to assess the attributes of
transit system. To analyze the practical implementation of IPA in transit user satisfaction studies, an extensive literature
review was carried out to identify challenges. Unlike the ‘‘performance’’ dimension, measuring ‘‘importance’’ is challenging,
given the wide variety of approaches and specific methods. For practical application, choosing a specific method in a specific
approach has diverse implications. Real-world transit user satisfaction surveys of three different bus transit (sub) systems in
Bogota´ were used to try, test, and compare results, methods, applications, and—from a practical perspective—to identify the
pitfalls, risks, difficulties, advantages, and biases of using different techniques to measure importance in relation to public
transportation services. At the end of the paper, the advantages and shortcomings of different importance measurement
methods are synthesized, and easy-to-implement suggestions for practitioners are provided.
The assessment of the quality of service provided by organizations plays a key role in the continuous improvement of the quality management system. When it comes to the quality of public transportation, the theme becomes even more relevant since user satisfaction influences the perception of a better quality of life. One of the modes of public transport that stands out in Brazil is the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, characterized by fast passenger transportation since it uses exclusive runways and promotes faster locomotion and less pollution of gases. In the Northeast region of Brazil, the current system has operated since 2014 with two large corridors with a length of 25 km and carrying more than 830 thousand people daily. Due to the importance of the fast passenger transport sector, it is necessary to evaluate the quality of the service provided. In this sense, the present work proposes an approach to evaluate the public transport services offered to users of the BRT system in the northeast of Brazil, through a structured questionnaire to measure customer perception and applying the Fuzzy Set and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). The motivation for choosing the Fuzzy Set is based on the data processing mode since fuzzy numbers simplify the expression of human judgment rather than its individual rationality, the translation of individual subjectivity, and data processing. The choice of TOPSIS for the possibility of ordering variables by means of comparison with the perfect alternative. The methodology of this article is considered a case study and 569 questionnaires were applied to BRT users. The result of the application of the approach showed that the best-evaluated variables are technical security and a single charge of the collection. On the other hand, there was a shortage of information about the schedules of the lines and the presence of convenience stores, demonstrating that these aspects can be developed for greater user satisfaction. It is believed that the proposed approach can contribute to the organizational context by guiding managers and establishing a logical set of procedures for assessing service delivery situations, revealing the level of adjustment required to achieve optimal service performance, and variables and quality dimensions by the best performance score according to the customer’s perception.
The development of wind farm projects requires proper planning and evaluation. Most often, the suitability of locations for siting wind farms is based on the wind resource (i.e. wind speeds) of a location. However, other criteria such as environmental, economic, and social factors are also important during the planning stage at arriving at a robust wind farm siting decision. In this paper, a geographic information system-based model for wind farm site selection using interval type-2 fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is proposed and implemented to determine the suitable wind farm sites in Nigeria. The model focuses on the use of fuzzy sets to represent expert's linguistic judgement with the aim of addressing the issues of uncertainty, vagueness and inconsistency in wind farm site selection decision making. The model uses two sets of criteria (weighted and constraint) which are either economic, social, or environmental in evaluating the suitable sites for wind farm development. The results of the study revealed that the best sites for wind farm development are basically located in the Northern part of Nigeria with Bauchi, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Plateau, and Sokoto states being the most suitable locations for wind farm projects. The suitable area for locating wind farm in the country is evaluated to be approximately 125728.6 km 2 , out of which about 2650.1 km 2 are considered to be extremely suitable for siting a wind farm. This paper could serve as a first-hand scientific information for decision makers and planners in selecting the optimal suitable site for wind farm development. Although, Nigeria is considered as the case study, the methodology can be severally applied to any region in the world.
Service provider administrators need to identify which perceived service quality (PSQ) elements are more relevant for users. By doing this, specific tactical and operational policies can be implemented to retain and attract new customers. In the public transport (PT) arena, few PSQ studies account for both service encounter and global satisfaction. Further, although some studies consider customer heterogeneity, we believe it has not been adequately captured. Regarding the problem of modelling PSQ from a PT service provider, we present a case study from Santiago, Chile. We analyse the PSQ derived from an extensive (n = 25,094) urban bus system satisfaction survey using structural equation models (SEM). Explicitly, we incorporate heterogeneity for both travel characteristics and sociodemographic attributes utilising a Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause (MIMIC) approach. We model two simultaneous regression equations regarding satisfaction with the bus-line (service encounter) being used and with the system (global), correcting for heterogeneity in all the satisfaction constructs via the SEM-MIMIC approach. Our main result is that the most critical variable for service encounter satisfaction is frequency/waiting time. For global satisfaction, the most significant attribute is tangibles/image, which includes satisfaction with the allied Metro service, with other users’ behaviour, and with information availability. As the perceived waiting time affects all satisfaction constructs negatively, we consider it a critical policy variable to tackle. Our model can serve as a planning tool for any PT administrator. The framework applies to any service setting with independent service-specific and global satisfaction attributes.
Car sharing is an important element of sharing economy, which is becoming more and more widespread in the world. Therefore, service providers would like to expand their capacities and market shares by adding new car sharing stations. In this study, a new model is proposed to provide a simple approach to evaluate potential car sharing stations for site selection problem. A Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (WASPAS) based Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) with interval type-2 fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model is proposed. Interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FS) are used to better address uncertainty in describing membership and non-membership functions. The proposed method is utilized in a case study of Istanbul, which involves determining the best location for a new car-sharing station among four alternatives. The method provides a more accurate decision-making tool for problems involving high levels of uncertainty.
Bus rapid transit (BRT) system as a transportation mode has a higher occupancy rate and is more suitable for long distances. Sustainability issues and improving BRT performance to enhance customer satisfaction require performance evaluation of possible alternatives. For this end, four scenarios as 1) adding buses to the BRT line, 2) speeding up the BRT buses, 3) reducing delay time, and 4) increasing the capacity of buses were simulated with Arena 14. Then, we developed Grey Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA-G) approach to weigh evaluation criteria including sustainability and risk factors. We implemented Grey COmplex PRoportional ASsessment of alternatives (COPRAS-G) to rank scenarios. Findings show that adding buses to the BRT line is the best alternative for improving the performance of the BRT line 1 in Tehran.
This paper analyses the passenger’s satisfaction towards the quality of existing public transportation mode choices in Bucharest. In order to eliminate the subjective factor from passenger’s judgment, we have used fuzzy multicriteria analysis method. The criteria have been grouped in six groups of satisfaction determinants: convenience of service, comfort, service reliability, safety and security, communication with passengers and price and affordability. According to the criteria analyzed, although the surface transport network offers a wider range of services, the respondents show an overwhelming preference for travelling by underground. © 2017, Bucharest University of Economic Studies. All rights reserved.
Duration of cargo operation (loading or discharging) is of paramount importance for ship owners and port managers since idle time at terminal significantly boost to the cost of providing shipping service. Hence, it is important to choose the appropriate shiploader type for handling bulk materials. This paper aims to present a comprehensive multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method extended by interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) for selecting appropriate shiploader type in maritime transportation. The proposed approach incorporates Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) under IT2FSs environment to overcome more of the uncertainty of experts’ judgement and expression in decision-making. The proposed approach adopts a sensitivity analysis to investigate the impact of key performance indicator (KPI) under numerous conditions. Besides its robust theoretical background, this paper prompts practical benefits to decision-makers (port owners or port managers) who make investment decision for appropriate shiploader type in dry bulk cargo shipment.
In this paper, a novel fuzzy Multiple Attribute Decision-Making model is proposed for evaluating service quality of public transportation. Evaluation of service quality of public transportation systems is vital to improve productivity, gain profits and increase customer satisfaction, so, a systematic and scientific approach is necessary for its solution. In this study, a Hierarchical TOPSIS method based on interval type-2 fuzzy is proposed in which a group of experts determines the attribute structure and the values of the attribute. For calculating and comparing the alternatives, operators, and efficient functions on type-2 fuzzy sets are used. For verification and confirmation of the results, we utilized the subjective and objective method and compared results with together. Based on Wang's method, a new method is defined for defuzzification of interval type-2 fuzzy numbers. The steps of the method are described first, and then an application of the proposed method for evaluation of service quality of Public Transportation in Shahrekord is provided.
Public transportation is one of the most important systems in transportation, especially in big and crowded cities. As a result, evaluation of public transportation systems is a strategic decision-making problem for both private and public sections. In this paper, the problem of public transportation passengers in Tehran is addressed and their satisfaction levels are assessed by using passenger satisfaction survey. An integrated MCDM approach is proposed for evaluation of public transportation systems based on Delphi method, group analytic hierarchy process (GAHP) and preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE). The proposed model provides more reliable and realistic results and introduces directions for future improvements of public transportation service quality. A sensitivity analysis is applied to investigate the influence of criteria weights on the decision making problem. As a conclusion, the most important public transportation systems in Tehran orderly are: metro, taxi, BRT, bus and van. Therefore, Tehran Municipality and policy makers should encourage and support the previously mentioned systems.
Public transit agencies are delivering transport services in a rapidly changing and highly competitive transportation market. Ensuring rider's satisfaction in such an environment has led several public transit agencies to adopt different marketing strategies. For example, market segmentation analyses are commonly employed by transit agencies to identify groups of users, which are subsequently used as a base for developing policies and strategies aimed at improving customer satisfaction. However, previous studies adopting this market segmentation approach have predominantly ignored spatial and contextual factors related to the transit network and the built environment of where a user resides, resulting in network-wide policies that are difficult to implement especially for agencies with scarce resources. This study presents a new segmentation approach that incorporates spatial and contextual factors in addition to other rider's preferences and satisfaction levels with commuter rail service in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, Canada. Including these factors in a market segmentation analysis has enabled us to recommend service interventions at a local and finer scale compared to previous studies, while at the same time providing the greatest impact on a specified segment of riders. This research provides transit planners and policy makers with a spatial segmentation approach, which can be used to maximize the benefits of service improvements intended to increase satisfaction with public transit among certain groups of users in a region.
As a public transportation mode, rail transit systems are one of the most preferred modes to avoid traffic congestion, especially during the rush hours. This paper proposes a service quality evaluation outline to measure rail transit lines' performances via passenger satisfaction surveys. The proposed method combines statistical analysis, fuzzy trapezoidal numbers and TOPSIS to evaluate service quality levels for multi periods. In total 17,769 surveys that are conducted in Istanbul in 2012, 2013, and 2014 are considered to determine the factors need to be improved. We provide recommendations to enhance the operation for specific lines and guidelines for future investments.
In the globalized world, fatal competition ruling in almost all business sectors hits especially airline companies due to the global nature of the industry. Thus, maintaining the business operations in a cost-effective manner is of paramount importance in this destructive business environment. While realizing this goal, a special focus on Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) operations is indispensable, considering that a significant proportion of expenses in the industry are originated from them. Since the MRO departments are responsible for maintenance, repair, and overhaul of aircrafts and engines under very strict standards, a smooth, clean-cut supply chain does not only provide a solid technical ground for daily operations but also it helps to gain a comparative advantage in cost leadership which, in turn, results with high customer satisfaction. Obviously, a key component of this chain is designing a robust and reliable Supplier Performance Evaluation (SPE) methodology where numerous tangible and intangible evaluation criteria come into play reflecting the multifaceted characteristic of the decision problem. This work proposes a three-phase hybrid approach to address the SPE problem in aviation industry where the suppliers are obliged to follow tight tolerances regarding quality and delivery times. Starting with selection of the most significant evaluation criteria, in the second stage, an Interval Type-2 Fuzzy (IT2F)-Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is employed to determine their relative importance. These weights are then given as input to an IT2F-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. We used the IT2F extensions due to the fact that some of the evaluation criteria are subjective and qualitative in nature. To prove the merit of the proposed methodology, an application is presented to SPE problem at Turkish Technic Inc., a subsidiary of Turkish Airlines.
Multi-faceted characteristics of urban travel have an impact on the passengers' overall satisfaction with the transport system. In this study, we investigate the interrelationships among traveler satisfaction, travel and traveler characteristics, and service performance in a multimodal network that comprises of a trunk line and its feeder lines. We analyze the factors influencing the choices of access to rail transit stations and the satisfaction of transit travelers with the rapid rail transit systems. We quantitatively study these relationships and demonstrate the complexity of evaluating transit service performance. Since the interrelationships among variables affecting this system are mainly stochastic, we analyze the satisfaction with transit system problem using a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN), which helps capture the causality among variables with inherent uncertainty. Using the case of Istanbul, we employ the BBN as a decision support tool for policy makers to analyze the rapid rail transit services and determine policies for improving the quality and the level of service to increase the satisfaction with transit system. In the case study, satisfaction with accessibility and access mode variables are found to be more effective variables than total travel time for travel time satisfaction, confirming the significant role of access in multimodal travels.
Public transportation has been regarded as one of the most sustainable forms of transport, because of which local governments have put efforts into increasing the mode share of public transportation. Recently, not only level of service but also user satisfaction has been focused on for the assessment of transport policy; however, several points have been overlooked in previous research, such as attribute-based satisfaction, the relationship between level of service and satisfaction, and user expectation. This paper deals with these issues while assuming the heterogeneity of satisfaction, which is an indicator of perception. Out-of-vehicle times, particularly headway and access time, were selected in the analysis because they can affect travel behavior of current and potential public transportation customers. In this analysis, pattern-recognition models were applied and public transportation users were segmented in terms of perception. The results suggest several notable recommendations for public transport policies and investigations.
Learning management systems (LMSs) are used today to assist in the designing, delivery and management of learning resources for learners. There are hundreds of LMS available in the marketplace. Selecting the most suitable LMS that meets specific requirements is a problem of decision making. Many studies in learning management system selection are implemented under complete information, while in the real world many uncertainty aspects do exist. As these systems were described by decision makers with vague, imprecise, ambiguous and inconsistent terms, it is understandable that traditional multi criteria decision making methods may not be effective. This paper develops a novel hybrid neutrosophic analytic hierarchy process approach to support facing of uncertainty in the decision making process to handle indeterminacy of information. In order to show the application of the developed method, a numerical experiment for an LMS selection is made using the method of neutrosophic analytic hierarchy process. Results show that the neutrosophic logic is capable of representing uncertainty manner understandable by the human logic. Obtained results have shown that Moodle is the best LMS that meets defined criteria.
In this study, we present an integrated method of Analytical Hierarchy Process based on interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FAHP) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution based on on interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FTOPSIS).The applicability of the proposed integrated method was performed on a case study of evaluation of life quality for 28 European Union Countries and other six countries, Iceland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey and Kosovo, in terms of 30 subjective criteria.The weights of the criteria were computed by IT2FAHP and the ranking of life quality for considered countries was constituted by IT2FTOPSIS.Furthermore, the rankings were obtained by using AHP and TOPSIS methods under crisp/ fuzzy environment to show performance of the proposed method.
Conditions of global competition in the aviation sector force airlines to be internationally-minded instead of competing only in their domestic markets. Thus, airlines are interested in potential international markets instead of domestic markets. This study focuses on the process of new route selection, which has a high impact on the revenue and passenger numbers of airlines. An airline company in Turkey plans to launch a new route at an airport in the North American region. Any suboptimal decision has a huge effect on the outcomes of airlines in the market. Therefore, making an optimal decision, which is compatible with the airline company's goal, is highly important. In this study, a decision analysis is applied in terms of the selection of a new route from five different destinations by using an interval type-2 fuzzy TOPSIS method. A multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method is used in order to identify the aspects of the new route's feasibility. Finally, a real case study is shown to verify the proposed method and to demonstrate its practicality and feasibility. The results show that the MCDM approach is a useful tool for decision-makers in terms of selecting potential airports for route analysis.
This study investigates the relationship between road-based public transport users' preferences and expectations of particular levels of support and their support of a set of improvement policy scenarios in Indonesia. A series of structural equation modelling estimations was carried out, using empirical surveys among road-based public transportation users in three major urban areas: Jakarta, Bandung and Yogyakarta. The results show that negative experience, service importance and dissatisfaction are factors that significantly correlate with the user preferences in accepting improvement policies along with fare adjustment. The users' travel behaviours and their socio-demographic characteristics were also found to be significant in influencing the degree of such support. However, the results also show discrepancies in the influence of key determinants across the three studied cities, which indicates a need for locally designed approaches.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSS) have become an important tool for public transport planners, as improvements in the perceived quality of certain service attributes can lead to greater use of public transport and lower traffic pollution. The literature shows that the importance of quality attributes has until now been estimated indirectly, as they are derived from the Customer Satisfaction Index using various different and complex techniques. Little work has been dedicated to its direct estimation (stated importance) by designing ad-hoc surveys, an approach that represents a considerable reduction in the length of the questionnaire.
This paper contributes to the limited existing literature by developing a survey technique based on hierarchy processes to estimate the stated importance of quality attributes, and compares the results with the derived importance obtained using conventional surveys with the same sample. The added value of this research is that it provides the first comparison between two quality survey methods using the same real case study in Madrid (Spain). The results achieved using this pioneer survey method (293 valid questionnaires) were validated using conventional face-to-face surveys (520 valid questionnaires). Factorial analysis, multiple regression analysis and Multiple Indicators Multiple Causes (MIMIC) models were applied to the conventional survey sample to analyse and derive the importance of the attributes. The results clearly show that, after a few teething troubles, the stated importance of quality attributes can be estimated directly, thus providing transport management companies with a simple and useful tool to implement in their Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSS), and narrowing the gap between practitioners’ needs and scientific research.
The rail transit has played an important role in economic vitality of the urban area. Providing services with high levels of quality is essential in order to promote public transportation by customizing the users of the services, and to reduce traffic congestion by shifting people away from private car use. For this reason, it is essential to understand passenger satisfaction with urban rail transit from a quantitative and systematic perspective. This paper borrows the fundamental concept of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) model to establish a passenger satisfaction evaluation model for urban rail transit in China. A structural equation modeling (SEM) method and its parameter estimation method: Partial Least Squares (PLS), are applied to estimate the proposed model. An evaluation indicator system including three levels of indicators is established to measure passengers' satisfaction on the services offered by the rail transit operation companies. The satisfaction index is obtained to quantize the degree of passenger satisfaction. The IPA matrix is used as an assist tool to show the advantages and disadvantages of the services of rail transit. Suzhou rail transit line 1 was used as a case study, four models with different latent constructs or estimation methods were built and compared, to demonstrate the proposed PSI model based on PLS estimation method was reliable and the sign and magnitude of parameters were reasonable. The causality between passenger satisfaction and its influence factors were confirmed by path coefficients of the model.
Material selection is very important in engineering design. Material selection methods utilizing fuzzy set theory have gradually gained acceptance because of their capabilities in handling impreciseness inherent in measuring material properties. Past studies are all based on type 1 fuzzy sets. This paper presents two interval type 2 fuzzy multi-attribute decision making methods for material selection. Rather representing uncertainty in trapezoidal type 1 fuzzy sets, this paper represents uncertainty in measurement, preference, judgment, or prediction in terms of trapezoidal interval type 2 fuzzy sets instead. This representation allows higher degree of impreciseness by specifying membership value as an interval rather than as an exact value. The two new methods presented in this paper are extended from two existing TOPSIS methods based on type 1 fuzzy set. They differ mainly in the stage when defuzzification is carried out and other details. Note that the two existing type-1 fuzzy based TOPSIS methods assume no knowledge about desirable material property values. It is shown in this paper that such methods might lead to the selection of undesirable materials. An example is used to illustrate the working of the two new methods, followed by discussion about the effects of some relevant factors. Ideas for extending this study are given in the conclusions.
Although investment projects supported by the state are extremely important in terms of national policy the projects to be transferred from the common public funds brings with it many problems. Highly transparent and comprehensive evaluation model are required to transfer the public resources to the right investment projects. It is necessary to consider many criteria for the evaluation of an investment project. These criteria are generally subjective and extremely difficult to express in numbers. However, using the fuzzy sets provide huge facilities to decision makers in project evaluation process with linguistic variables and measurement challenges. In this study, a new evaluation model for investment projects have been proposed for development agencies operating in Turkey. To address ambiguities and relativities in real world scenarios more conveniently, type-2 fuzzy sets and crisp sets have been simultaneously used. The proposed model for the investment project evaluation problem composed of type-2 fuzzy AHP and type-2 fuzzy TOPSIS methods. The proposed fuzzy MCDM method consists of three phases: (1) identify the criteria to be used in the model, (2) type-2 fuzzy AHP computations, (3) evaluation of investment projects with type-2 fuzzy TOPSIS and determination of the final rank. To perceive proposed model better, an application with real case data have been performed in Middle Black Sea Development Agency in Turkey. As a consequence of this application, it has been observed that the proposed model have proved effective in evaluation of alternatives in multi-criteria group decision making problems in a broader perspective and flexible fashion.
A technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) currently is probably one of most popular method for Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). The method was primarily developed for dealing with real-valued data. Nevertheless, in practice often it is hard to present precisely exact ratings of alternatives with respect to local criteria and as a result these ratings are presented by as fuzzy values. Many recent papers have been devoted to the fuzzy extension of the TOPSIS method, but only a few works provided the type-2 fuzzy extensions, whereas such extensions seem to be very useful for the solution of many real-world problems, e.g., Multiple Criteria Group Decision Making problem. Since the proposed type-2 fuzzy extensions of the TOPSIS method have some limitations and drawbacks, in this paper we propose an interval type-2 fuzzy extension of the TOPSIS method realized with the use of α-cuts representation of the interval type-2 fuzzy values ( ). This extension is free of the limitations of the known methods. The proposed method is realized for the cases of perfectly normal and normal s. The illustrative examples are presented to show the features of the proposed method.
In this paper we give an overview of the use of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) for transport project appraisal. The aim of this review is to provide an outline of the increasing use of MCDA methods in the evaluation of transport projects. We investigate for which kind of transport decisions the MCDA methods are applied. The review consists of identifying the transport related subjects, the interconnected arising decision problems and the kind of representative MCDA method(s) used for transport project evaluations. This review allowed deriving a general frame for the evaluation of transport projects. One of the conclusions resulted in the importance of integrating stakeholders in the decision process not yet very common in the transport projects that were reviewed. The Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA) approach is suggested as a direction for further research. The MAMCA methodology has already proven its usefulness in several transport related decision problems enabling to involve the stakeholders explicitly in the decision process.
Rail transit is one of the most important public transportation types, especially in big and crowded cities. Therefore, getting a high customer satisfaction level is an essential task for municipalities and governments. For this purpose, a survey is conducted to question the attributes related to rail transit network (metros, trams, light rail and funicular) in Istanbul. In this study, we present a novel framework which integrates statistical analysis, SERVQUAL, interval type-2 fuzzy sets and VIKOR to evaluate customer satisfaction level for the rail transit network of Istanbul. Level of crowdedness and density in the train, air-conditioning system of trains' interior, noise level and vibration during the journey, and phone services are determined as the attributes need improvements. On the other hand, different improvement strategies are suggested for the rail transit network. The proposed approach provides directions for the future investments and can be generalized and applied to complex decision making problems encounter inexact, indefinite and subjective data or uncertain information.