Multi criteria evaluation framework for prioritizing Indian railway stations using modified rough AHP-Mabac method

Abstract

This study proposes a hybrid multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology for evaluating the performance of the Indian railway stations (IRS). Since the customers are heterogeneous and their requirements are often imprecise, the evaluation process is a critical step for prioritizing the IRS. To improve the existing approaches, an efficient evaluation technique has been proposed by integrating rough numbers, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and multi-attribute border approximation area comparison (MABAC) methods in rough environment. The relative criteria weights based on their preferences given by experts is determined by rough AHP whereas evaluation of the alternatives based on these criteria are done by the modified rough MABAC method. A case study of prioritizing different railway stations in India is provided to demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of the proposed method. Among different criteria “proactively” is observed to be the most important criteria in our analysis, followed by ‘Railfanning’ and ‘DMO’ is found to be the best among the forty IRS in this study. Finally, a comparative analysis and validity testing of the proposed method are elaborated and the methodology provides a standard to select IRS on the basis of different criteria.