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This study aims to provide a scientific framework for the selection of suitable substation technology in an electrical power distribution network.

The present paper focuses on adopting an integrated multi-criteria decision-making approach using the Delphi method, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The AHP is used to ascertain the criteria weights, and the TOPSIS is used for choosing the most fitting technology among choices of air-insulated substation, gas-insulated substation (GIS) and hybrid substation, to guarantee educated and supported choice.

The results reveal that the GIS is the most preferred technology by area experts, considering all the criteria and their relative preferences.

The current research has implications for public and private organizations responsible for the management of electricity in India, particularly the distribution system as the choice of substations is an essential component that has a strong impact on the smooth functioning and performance of the energy distribution in the country. The implementation of the chosen technology not only reduces economic losses but also contributes to the reduction of power outages, minimization of energy losses and improvement of the reliability, security, stability and quality of supply of the electrical networks.

The study explores the impact of substation technology installation in terms of its economic and environmental challenges. It emphasizes the need for proper installation checks to avoid long-term environmental hazards. Further, it reports that the economic benefits should not come at the cost of ecological degradation.

The present study is the first to provide a decision support framework for the selection of substation technologies using the hybrid AHP-TOPSIS approach. It also provides a cost–benefit analysis with short-term and long-term horizons. It further pinpoints the environmental issues with the installation of substation technology.

This study caries a survey approach using the expert's interview and literature to select the important criteria to select and evaluate the third-party reverse logistics providers (3PRLPs) in manufacturing companies. In total, 16 criteria are selected to evaluate 3PRLPs, and these criteria are classified on the basis of three main elements of sustainable growth, including economic, social and environmental development. Therefore, a hybrid decision-making approach is utilized to evaluate and rank the 3PRLPs in manufacturing companies.

This paper proposes a new decision-making approach using the projection model and entropy method under the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set to assess 3PRLPs based on sustainability perspectives. A survey approach using the literature review and experts' interview is conducted to select the important criteria to select and evaluate 3PRLPs in manufacturing companies. To assess the criteria weight, the entropy method is used. Further, the projection model is applied to prioritize the 3PRLPs option. Sensitivity analysis and comparison process are performed in order to test and validate the developed method.

The presented methodology uses the benefits to determine the former for measuring the parameters considered and the latter for rating the 3PRLPs alternatives. A case study is taken to 3PRLPs in the manufacturing industry to illustrate the efficiency of the introduced hybrid method. The findings of this study indicate that when facing uncertainties of input and qualitative data, the proposed solution delivers more viable performance and therefore is suitable for wider uses.

The conception of the circular economy (CE) comes from the last 4 decades, and in recent years, tremendous attention has been carried out on this concept, partially because of the availability of natural resources in the world and changes in consumption behaviour of developed and developing nations. Remarkably, the sustainable supply chain management concepts are established parallel to the CE foundations, grown in industrial practice and ecology literature for a long time. In fact, to reduce the environmental concerns, sustainable supply chain management seeks to diminish the materials' flow and minimize the unintentional harmful consequences of consumption and production processes. Customers and governments are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental sustainability in the CE era, which allows businesses to concentrate more resources on reverse logistics (RLs). However, most manufacturing enterprises have been inspired to outsource their RL operations to competent 3PRLPs due to limited resources and technological limitations. In RL outsourcing practices, the selection of the best 3PRLP is helpfully valuable due to its potential to increase the economic viability of enterprises and boost their long-term growth.

Ports handle a significant portion of international cargo, so the performance of ports plays a major role in the economic development of a country. This paper aims to study how port performance depends on various interdependent factors and how it requires a holistic approach, which accounts for all the necessary criteria that contribute to the overall efficiency and performance.

An integrated fuzzy DEMATEL-TOPSIS approach with an objective to evaluate the operational capability and financial performance of the ports is proposed. A case study is presented with an analysis of the major South Indian ports to assess port operational performance and evaluate various financial ratios to assess financial performance.

Through a review of the literature and based on the inputs from experts, six criteria affecting the operational performance and six financial criteria were identified. The debt coverage ratios turned out to be the most important, while the liquidity ratios were the least important. The six operational criteria have almost similar importance. The final results indicate a consistent overall performance by the Ennore Port, except during one financial year.

The proposed solution approach helps to identify and concentrate on the criteria that affect port performance. It will also help to evaluate and understand the dynamics involved in the performance of ports.

This work highlights the key measurable operational and financial criteria that affect the efficiency of ports. The integrated fuzzy DEMATEL-TOPSIS approach provides a better way to evaluate and benchmark port performance.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) rating agencies have arisen with the aim of providing external and reliable information about business behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to present a multi-criteria methodology for integrating CSR valuations with the financial performance of companies in a unique measure of global sustainability performance.

The authors present a hybrid TOPSIS methodology on transformed scores of both the CSR valuations and the financial ratios. The “attribute-specific evaluation” approach into Multi-attribute Prospect Theory (PT) has been applied and the Design of Experiments (DoE) is used with the TOPSIS value of the firm as the response variable.

The proposal has been applied to 118 companies evaluated by Vigeo and Covalence CSR agencies. The authors also have considered five financial ratios of the companies in order to assess their financial performance. Consistent aggregation for firms has been achieved. Relationships between the different rankings, both those of Vigeo and Covalence and the ones constructed in this research, have been analysed. All top 10 Global sustainable firms rank among the top 10 positions in at least one of the remaining rankings. The results show that Vigeo and Covalence provide different information about the CSR behaviour of the companies.

Another interesting question is to study the discrepancies between Vigeo and Covalence, for example, in which areas there is the greatest divergence between the two agencies and what could be the reasons for this.

The results of this research could be of interest for both investors who want a global picture of companies in their selection process and stakeholders concerned with CSR issues who want to take advantage of different CSR ratings.

The application of PT softens the compensatory behaviour of the classical TOPSIS that may prove unsuitable for social evaluation. The DoE allows the aggregation of the weight sets from various decision markers. The combined methodology facilitates the scoring of new firms and the rank reversal problem can be mitigated with this methodology.

Maintenance strategy selection (MSS) is considered as a complex multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive review on the use and application of MCDM approach and its associated case studies in the field of MSS.

The paper systematically classifies the published literature of both researchers and practitioners and then analyzes and reviews it methodically.

This paper outlines the important issues relevant to the subject, including the techniques used for data collection, the quantitative and qualitative criteria taken into account in decision making, the maintenance strategies considered for evaluation, the methods applied to find the solution, and the type of industries being studied. In each category, the gaps are identified along with recommendations for the future research work.

Literature on classification of the MCDM models used to select the most appropriate maintenance strategy is very limited. The proposed classification scheme not only will be useful to researchers, but also assists maintenance professionals to find the models that fit their specific needs.

The paper provides many references in the field, including the articles published in academic journals, conference papers, master and doctoral dissertations, text books, and industrial reports, and suggests a classification scheme according to various attributes.

China is a critical factor for constructing an all-round well-off society. Infrastructure construction, especially high-grade highways, in the western area is an essential component of the strategy for large-scale development of west China. It is crucial to evaluate investment projects for high-grade highways and select the best one. Testing investment projects and selecting the best one can be recognized as a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. In this process, decision-makers (DMs) usually face with uncertain information because of complicated decision environment or their limited knowledge.

A new Evaluation based on the Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) for PFS based on the DEMATEL is proposed: The authors offer a new score function and prove some properties for the score function. They put forward a novel Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method for PFS to analyze the relations of criteria and get criteria weights. Considering the bounded rationality of DM, the authors propose a new EDAS method for PFS based on prospect theory. They apply their proposed approach to a western city's actual case in selecting a suitable project for building a high-grade highway.

By comparison, the authors can observe that our method has some traits: (1) considering bounded rationality of DM; (2) fewer computation; (3) having the ability to obtain the relation of criteria and finding the critical factor in the decision system.

In this paper, the authors propose a new EDAS method for PFS based on the DEMATEL technique. They transform PFS into crisp numbers by their proposed new score function for PFN to make the decision process more convenient. Then, the authors use the DEMATEL method to obtain the relationship between criteria and criteria weights. Furthermore, they propose a new EDAS method for PFS based on DEMATEL to reduce the computational complexity. Finally, they apply our method to a real case and compare our method with two traditional methods.

The study aims at evaluating the most appropriate transport project which is one of the critical concerns of transport infrastructure scheduling. This process will be applied considering a set of criteria and discussed alternatives with sustainable perspectives.

In this paper, a complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) framework is discussed to handle the sustainable transport investment project (STIP) assessment problem within a single-valued neutrosophic set (SVNSs). To form the procedure more useful in handling with uncertain features, a SVNS is applied as a valuable procedure to handle uncertainty. First, a new discrimination measure for SVNSs is introduced and discussed some elegant properties to determine the significance degree or weight values of criteria with the sustainabality perspectives. Second, an integrated approach is introduced based on the discrimination measure and the COPRAS method on SVNSs and named as SVN-COPRAS.

A case study of an STIP evaluation problem is used to confirm the practicality and effectiveness of the SVN-COPRAS framework. Lastly, comparative discussion and sensitivity investigation are illustrated to prove the strength and solidity of the proposed framework.

The SVNSs enrich the essence of linguistic information when a decision expert (DE) vacillates among different linguistic values (LVs) to measure a sustainable transport project alternative problem. The utilization of SVNSs provides a more stable procedure to describe DEs' evaluations. So, an elegant methodology is developed to incorporate the DEs' awareness and experience for electing the desired STIPs. The introduced methodology has higher operability than the single-valued neutrosophic set technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (SVN-TOPSIS) procedure during the larger numbers of attribute(s) or option(s). For the SVN-COPRAS methodology, there is no need to estimate the single-valued neutrosophic ideal solution (SVN-IS) and single-valued neutrosophic anti-ideal solution (SVNA-IS). The outcomes are calculated with handling the realistic data, which elucidates that the introduced model can tackle more intricate and realistic multi-criteria decision-making issues.

Demolition is a high-risk operation in construction projects that may lead to serious accidents. Risk assessment is a fundamental step in managing demolition risk and preventing casualties and financial losses. The present study aims to provide a framework to identify, analyse and evaluate the risks in building demolition operations.

According to previous studies and the use of expert knowledge, 10 possible risks of the building demolition operation were identified. Subsequently, these risks were assessed using a combination of fuzzy logic with fault tree analysis (FTA), criteria importance through inter-criteria correlation (CRITIC) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). Then, the risks were classified with the help of a risk decision matrix (RDM), and appropriate treatment strategies were presented according to the level of importance of each risk.

Considering the obtained magnitude for each risk and its rating, building collapse and noise pollution were identified as the most and least significant risks, respectively. The results of this study were in good agreement with the data provided by the Iranian Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare, as well as obtained results of the previous studies on demolition.

This paper provides a novel framework for assessing the risks in building demolition operations. The findings of this study help demolition project managers to manage the risks in their projects properly.

Reverse logistics (RL) is a type of supply chain management that moves goods from the end customer to the original manufacturer for reuse, remanufacturing and disposal purposes. Owing to growing environmental legislations and the development of new technologies in marketing, RL has attracted more significance among experts and academicians. Outsourcing RL practices to third-party reverse logistics provider (3PRLP) has been identified as one of the most important management strategies due to complexity of RL operations and the lack of available resource. Current sustainability trends have made 3PRLP assessment and selection process more complex. In order to select the 3PRLP, the existence of several aspects of sustainability motivates the experts to establish a new multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach.

With the growing complexity and high uncertainty of decision environments, the preference values of 3PRLPs are not always expressed with real numbers. As the generalized version of fuzzy set, intuitionistic fuzzy set and Fermatean fuzzy set, the theory of q-rung orthopair fuzzy set (q-ROFS) is used to permit decision experts (DEs) to their assessments in a larger space and to better cope with uncertain information. Given that the combined compromise solution (CoCoSo) is an innovative MCDA approach with higher degree of stability and reliability than several existing methods.

To exhibit the potentiality and applicability of the presented framework, a case study of S3PRLPs assessment is taken from q-rung orthopair fuzzy perspective. The assessment process consists of three sustainability aspects namely economic, environment and social dimensions related with a total of 14 criteria. Further, sensitivity and comparative analyses are made to display the solidity and strength of the presented approach. The results of this study approve that the presented methodology is more stable and efficient in comparison with other methods.

Thus, the objective of the study is to develop a hybrid decision-making methodology by combining CoCoSo method and discrimination measure with q-ROFS for selecting an appropriate sustainable 3PRLP (S3PRLP) candidate under uncertain environment. In the proposed method, a novel procedure is proposed to obtain the weights of DEs within q-ROFS context. To calculate the criteria weights, a new formula is presented based on discrimination measure, which provides more realistic weights. In this respect, a new discrimination measure is proposed for q-ROFSs.

Deals with the relationship between cultural closeness and cultural affinity. The basis of the research is that a correlation exists between the level of affinity (or “liking”) executives feel for a foreign culture, and the extent to which they feel psychologically close to that culture. Findings indicate a moderate level of correlation between cultural closeness and cultural liking (r = 0.4048, p = 0.0000), which would suggest that cultural closeness is a contributory element to psychic closeness. Looks at the concept of psychic distance, examining the component elements. It then details the empirical research on which the conclusions are based, explaining how a sample of industry executives was identified, and how the research was carried out. Concludes with an overview of culture as an element of distance in international business, and makes some suggestions for pre‐departure executive training.