Applications of fuzzy multiple criteria decision making methods in civil engineering: a state-of-the-art survey

Abstract

A variety of fuzzy multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) models have been proposed to solve complicated decision-making problems. Many applications have been achieved, especially in the field of civil engineering. To analyze the developments about the fuzzy MCDM methods and their applications in civil engineering in recent years and further explore the future research directions, this study conducts a state of the art survey in which 52 journal papers focusing on the applications of fuzzy MCDM models in civil engineering from 2016 to 2020 are reviewed. We respectively classify these articles according to research problems and research methods. Through the literature review, we get findings in terms of the most concerned decision-making problem, the most widely-used evaluation criterion and the most popular fuzzy MCDM model. Furthermore, we present four aspects of research challenges and corresponding future research directions in the field of civil engineering, which may be helpful for researchers and practitioners to further investigate.

Keywords

• civil engineering
• multiple criteria decision making
• fuzzy set
• fuzzy multiple criteria decision making
• literature review