Multi-Criteria Decision-Making in Maritime Systems
Summary
Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) in maritime systems addresses the challenge of evaluating and prioritising multiple, often conflicting factors when making strategic or operational choices at sea and in ports. Such factors may include safety, environmental impact, cost, energy consumption, regulatory compliance and service quality. Over the past decade, advances in computational power, data availability and fuzzy logic have enabled more sophisticated models that integrate quantitative metrics (fuel consumption, transit time, emissions) with qualitative judgements (risk tolerance, stakeholder preferences, regulatory pressures). Typical applications encompass vessel selection, port infrastructure investment, route optimisation, energy management in shipyards, emergency response planning and supply-chain resilience. Contemporary frameworks frequently combine hierarchical structuring of criteria, pairwise comparison methods and distance-to-ideal solutions, allowing decision makers to balance efficiency and sustainability. As shipping decarbonises and digital transformation accelerates, MCDM tools are ever more vital to reconcile commercial imperatives with environmental goals, ensure compliance with international conventions and accommodate the views of diverse stakeholders such as shipowners, port authorities and flag-state regulators.
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Multi-Criteria Decision-Making in Maritime Systems publication trend
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Technical terms
Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM): A family of methods for evaluating and ranking alternatives based on multiple quantitative and qualitative criteria.
Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP): A structured technique that decomposes a decision problem into a hierarchy of criteria and performs pairwise comparisons to derive relative weights.
Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS): A ranking method that identifies solutions closest to an ideal best and furthest from an ideal worst scenario.
Fuzzy Logic: An approach that handles imprecise or ambiguous information by representing degrees of membership rather than binary true/false values.
Group Decision Making (GDM): A collaborative process in which multiple experts aggregate individual judgements to reach a consensus ranking of alternatives.
References
- An Exploratory Study of the Critical Success Factors of the Global Shipping Industry in the Digital Era. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (2023).
- Application of Group Decision Making in Shipping Industry 4.0: Bibliometric Analysis, Trends, and Future Directions. Systems (2023).
- Identification of Shipyard Priorities in a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Environment through a Transdisciplinary Energy Management Framework: A Real Case Study for a Turkish Shipyard. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (2021).
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