Sustainability evaluation for phosphorus mines using a hybrid multi-criteria decision making method

Weizhang Liang, Guoyan Zhao () and Suizhi Luo ()
Additional contact information
Weizhang Liang: Central South University
Guoyan Zhao: Central South University
Suizhi Luo: National University of Defense Technology

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2021, vol. 23, issue 8, No 60, 12433 pages

Abstract: Abstract Considering the mounting conflict of economic growth and environmental destruction, promoting sustainable development has become inevitable in many industries, especially for mines. This study focuses on developing suitable approaches to assess the sustainability for phosphorus mines. First, a comprehensive sustainability assessment criteria scheme is designed. For quantitative criteria, real numbers are utilized to signify objective values. For qualitative criteria, triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs) are used to represent subjective fuzzy cognition of decision makers. Meanwhile, a variable-weight model is built to calculate sub-criteria weights. Thereafter, the traditional multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (MABAC) approach is modified with hybrid assessment data (i.e., real numbers and TFNs) to obtain the final evaluation results. Last, an example of evaluating the sustainability for four phosphorus mines in China is studied to justify the feasibility of the hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method. Moreover, the advantages of our approach are revealed by the sensitivity and comparative analyses. The results show that our approach is dependable to deal with such hybrid MCDM problems and can provide effective guidance for sustainable development management.

Keywords: Sustainability evaluation; Phosphorus mines; Triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs); Hybrid multi-criteria decision making (MCDM); Multi-attributive border approximation area comparison (MABAC) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10668-020-01175-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:23:y:2021:i:8:d:10.1007_s10668-020-01175-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-020-01175-1

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().