A fuzzy multicriteria evaluation system for the assessment of tunnels vis-a-vis surface roads: the WPMA case - part II

The Fuzzy Multicriteria Evaluation System (FUMES) is applied on a real evaluation problem such as the Western Peripheral Motorway of Athens (WPMA). The lack of a formal development model of the study area suggested an evaluation strategy, which is characterized by the high uncertainty of the evaluation environment. This has resulted in using judgments when quantitative information on the performance of the tunnel or the surface road was not available. It also resulted in employing a relatively large number of alternative scenarios to deal with the different policy goals. The attempted impact analysis generated crisp and fuzzy scores for each competing alternative. The different scenarios under which the various alternatives were evaluated are of two types: socio-economic and policy scenarios. Subsequently, the criteria weights were computed using the Fuzzy Hierarchical Analysis and the different CBA and MCA methods were applied. Finally, the output of the evaluation determined that the surface road is the most 'stable' solution for all the 'extrovert' development scenarios, while the tunnel is more preferable for all the 'introvert' development scenarios. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.