A Modified D Numbers Methodology for Environmental Impact Assessment

Abstract

Abstract. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is usually evaluated by many factors influenced by various kinds of uncertainty or fuzziness. As a result, the key issues of EIA problem are to represent and deal with the uncertain or fuzzy information. D numbers theory, as the extension of Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence, is a desirable tool that can express uncertainty and fuzziness, both complete and incomplete, quantitative or qualitative. However, some shortcomings do exist in D numbers combination process, the commutative property is not well considered when multiple D numbers are combined. Though some attempts have made to solve this problem, the previous method is not appropriate and convenience as more information about the given evaluations represented by D numbers are needed. In this paper, a data-driven D numbers combination rule is proposed, commutative property is well considered in the proposed method. In the combination process, there does not require any new information except the original D numbers. An illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.

An Application of Fuzzy-VIKOR Method in Environmental Impact Assessment of the Boog Mine Southeast of Iran

“…RIAM and Folchi methods did not consider the positive impacts of the project [16]. D-number method developed in order to reduce the uncertainty of the EIA methods and later modified by Wang and Wei [17]. As impacts of the components should take into account simultaneously during EIA, multi-criteria/multi-attribute-decisionanalysis (MCDA/MADA) enables an analysis of different aspects of project impacts [18,19].…”

Risk Assessment on Offshore Photovoltaic Power Generation Projects in China Using D Numbers and ANP

“…On the other hand, practical value of the D numbers is also investigated by many scholars. The D numbers theory is applied in many aspects, such as multiple attribute decision analysis(MADA) [49], risk evaluation [50], human reliability analysis [51], evaluation for sustainable mobility [52], multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) [53], [54], impact of performance on human resources decisions [55], environment impact assessment [56] and so on [57]- [63].…”

A New Evaluation Methodology for Quality Goals Extended by D Number Theory and FAHP

“…Aiming to overcome the above mentioned deficiencies of evidence theory, D number theory has emerged in 2012, which provides a more flexible way to deal with uncertain information, and the above mentioned limitations are well addressed. Since the advantage of D number theory, it has been widely carried out to solve these problems, such as decision making [65][66][67], location selection [68], risk assessment [69], supply chain management [70], target recognition [71], environmental impact assessment [72,73], curtain grouting efficiency assessment [74] and so forth [75][76][77]. Besides, D number thoery can be together used with other measures, such as intuitionistic hesitant fuzzy set [78], decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method (DEMATEL) [79], failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) [80], to generate new measures for some real-life problems.…”