RESEARCH ARTICLE


Application of Various Multiple Criteria Analysis Methods for the Evaluation of Rural Road Projects



Sahadev Bahadur Bhandari1, *, Dimitrios Nalmpantis2
1 Department of Civil Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Pulchowk Campus, Lalitpur, Nepal
2 School of Civil Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece


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Creative Commons License
© 2018 Bhandari and Nalmpantis.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Civil Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University, Pulchowk Campus, Lalitpur, Nepal; Tel: +977 1 4810181, +977 9841380634; E-mail: sbbhandari@ioe.edu.np


Abstract

Introduction:

Ex-ante evaluation of rural road projects is important for proper utilisation of scarce financial resources. In recent years, several multiple criteria analysis methods have been applied for the evaluation of transportation projects.

Methods:

Here we compare three multi-criteria methods (i.e. TOPSIS, MOORA, and PROMETHEE) in ranking rural roads. The criteria and weightage were identified with an expert questionnaire survey and the decision matrix was obtained from a field survey of four rural roads of Nepal. These data demonstrate the successful application of various multi-criteria analysis methods for the evaluation of rural road projects with sustainable indicators.

Results:

The results of multi-criteria methods depend upon the value of performance measures, weightage, normalization, and aggregation procedures.

Conclusion:

We also concluded that the multi-criteria methods used (i.e. TOPSIS, MOORA, and PROMETHEE), in which weightage is derived using robust methods (e.g. AHP) and precise measurement of criteria of rural roads, in general return similar rankings.

Keywords: MOORA, Multiple criteria analysis methods, PROMETHEE, Rural roads, TOPSIS, Analytic hierarchy Process (AHP).