DECISION TOOL DEVELOPMENT FOR DESALINATION TECHNOLOGY SELECTION AT MENA AND GCC REGIONS USING HYBRID FUZZY

Abstract

Seawater desalination technologies have been used extensively in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Gulf Countries Council (GCC). These technologies have its own advantages, challenges, development trend and applicability. This research aims to develop an application as a decision support for selection the feasible seawater desalination technology using a hybrid fuzzy technique as Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach. This hybrid technique integrates Fuzzy -AHP to model the linguistic vagueness, ambiguity, and incomplete knowledge with TOPSIS to rank the technologies upon their overall performance. Four main criteria are adopted which are: technical, economic, environmental and technology trend with total of 28 sub-criteria developed. Finally, the developed application (named as: DESAL-MCDM) provides more accurate, effective and objective decision tool for selection feasible desalination technology.