Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are becoming increasingly popular in solving energy selection problems because these problems involve multiple and often conflicting criteria. This paper presents comparative analysis of ranking renewable energy sources (RES) for electricity generation in Taiwan using four MCDM methods - WSM, VIKOR, TOPSIS, and ELECTRE. The Shannon entropy weight method is used to assess the importance of each criterion for the ranking of RES. After that, four MCDM methods are utilized for quantitative evaluation to rank all available RE alternatives. From the weights estimation results, efficiency is the first priority in all evaluation criteria, followed by job creation, operation, and maintenance cost. The purpose of this study is to rank the priorities of various RES and propose recommendations for Taiwan's RE development. The ranking results show that hydro is the best alternative in Taiwan, followed by solar, wind, biomass and geothermal. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis of the weights was conducted considering the ranking results heavily depend on the criteria weight. The results of sensitivity analysis indicated that when financial or technical aspects are focused upon, hydropower is the best RES because its technology is the most mature and the cost is the lowest in Taiwan. In addition, from an environmental perspective, wind energy is the best choice, and from the social perspective, solar PV is the best choice. The findings of this study can provide useful information to energy decision makers and serve as a reference for Taiwan's energy policy.

Comparative analysis of MCDM methods for ranking renewable energy sources in Taiwan

A new fuzzy multi-criteria framework for measuring sustainability performance of a supply chain

This book presents survey results on priority ranking of watershed management criteria. This survey was completed by 30 undergraduate and postgraduate students from Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The students were registered in various programs run by the Faculty in Semester 1, 2012. The applications of three weighting methods namely rating, ranking, and ratio are discussed in the book. We have also done data mining on some keywords using three popular scholar databases. These databases include sciencedirect, scopus, and sciverse. Four abbreviated keywords (MCDM, MCDA, MCA, MADM) used to represent multi-criteria decision-making were used and these three databases were searched for different popular weighting methods for a period of 13 years (2000–2012). The findings of data mining are presented in this book. Overall, this book presents a review of weighting methods applied in various multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods.

Weighting Methods and their Effects on Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model Outcomes in Water Resources Management

In this paper, first we set up a Water Supply and Demand Indicator system (WSDI), which contains 6 first-level indicators and 16 second- level indicators Then we adopt the entropy method to establish concepts of Supply Index (SI) and Demand Index (DI) Next, we transform the traditional GE-Matrix by generalizing the axes as SI vs DI and dividing it into five diagonal-parallel areas Then, we choose Qingdao in our following analysis Based on the WSDI model, we construct the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model to forecast water situation in Qingdao

/pdf/water-scarcity-fact-or-fiction-4k4clkf1xb.pdf

Water Scarcity: Fact or Fiction?

A holistic low carbon city indicator framework for sustainable development

Considering the difficulty of fuzzy synthetic evaluation method in calculation of the multiple factors and ignorance of the relationship among evaluating objects, a new weight evaluation process using entropy method was introduced. This improved method for determination of weight of the evaluating indicators was applied in water quality assessment of the Three Gorges reservoir area. The results showed that this method was favorable for fuzzy synthetic evaluation when there were more than one evaluating objects. One calculation was enough for calculating every monitoring point. Compared with the original evaluation method, the method predigested the fuzzy synthetic evaluation process greatly and the evaluation results are more reasonable.

Jing-nan Sun

Papers

Entropy method for determination of weight of evaluating indicators in fuzzy synthetic evaluation for water quality assessment.