Application of ANP and DEMATEL to evaluate the decision-making of municipal solid waste management in Metro Manila

An effective solution is applied based on a combined ANP and DEMATEL method to assist the expert group evaluating different MSW management solutions, which finds that each city should have its own type of thermal process technology and resource recovery facility before landfill.

Abstract

A municipal solid waste management (MSW) expert group was consulted in order to mirror how government officials might reach an effective solution regarding municipal solid waste management in Metro Manila. A critical issue regarding this is how the expert group can better evaluate and select a favorable MSW management solution using a series of criteria. MSW management solution selection is a multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem, which requires the consideration of a large number of complex criteria. A robust MCDM method should consider the interactions among these criteria. The analytic network process (ANP) is a relatively new MCDM method which can deal with all kinds of interactions systematically. The Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) not only can convert the relations between cause and effect of criteria into a structural model, but also can be used as a way to handle the inner dependences within a set of criteria. Hence, this paper applies an effective solution based on a combined ANP and DEMATEL method to assist the expert group evaluating different MSW management solutions. According to the results, the best solution is for each city to have its own type of thermal process technology and resource recovery facility before landfill rather than entering a joint venture with enterprises or going into build-operate-transfer projects in order to be able to construct thermal process technologies and resource recovery facilities.