“…Rostami, Neri, and Epitropakis () proposed a novel algorithm by employing a progressive preference sector approach to conduct the decision. The preference sector approach (also referred to as the utopia point method) has been successfully applied in several fields such as the electric power network problem (see Aghaei, Baharvandi, Rabiee, & Akbari, ; Deng, Liu, Ouyang, Lin, & Xie, ; Ning & You, ), energy harvesting problem (see Wang, Liu, Yuan, & Chen, ), and shortest path problem (Granat & Guerriero, ). However, this approach has not been applied in the network design problem.…”