Group decision making process for early stage evaluations of infrastructure projects using extended VIKOR method under fuzzy environment

Abstract Purpose This paper considers the evaluations of project alternatives at the early stages of infrastructure project developments. Although it is expected to make important decisions at project early stages, it is rarely possible to obtain reliable data for exact evaluations. To deal with low quality data and the existence of uncertainties, this paper extends the evaluation problem to the fuzzy environment. Methods We propose group decision making process for early stage evaluations of infrastructure projects. The evaluation approach utilizes combination weighting and compromise ranking. We integrate subjective and objective weighting methods to specify criteria weights. Afterwards, we use the VIKOR method to rank alternatives in the presence of conflicting criteria. Results As a case study, we illustrate the evaluation problem within a railway line reconstruction project. Specifically, the proposed approach is efficiently applied to evaluate and rank several route alternatives considered within the reconstruction project of the regional line Pančevo – Vršac at Serbian railway network. Conclusions The provided example illustrates the applicability of the proposed approach to deal with the evaluations at the early stage of the railway line reconstruction. The existence of uncertainties at early stages of project developments is common, so the proposed method is also applicable for other linear infrastructure in transport sector