Alternative-fuel based vehicles for sustainable transportation: A fuzzy group decision supporting framework for sustainability prioritization

The development of alternative-fuel vehicles has been recognized as a promising way for emissions reduction from transportation. This study aims to develop a fuzzy group decision supporting framework for sustainability prioritization of alternative-fuel based vehicles. A criteria system which consists of thirteen evaluation criteria in environmental, economic, technological and social aspects was developed for sustainability assessment of alternative-fuel vehicles. The linear goal programming priority based Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process was employed to determine the weights of the evaluation criteria for sustainability assessment of alternative-fuel vehicles, and Fuzzy Group Multi-Attribute Decision Analysis which allows multiple groups of stakeholders to participate in the decision-making process for rating the alternative-fuel vehicles with respect to the evaluation criteria was developed for sustainability prioritization of alternative-fuel vehicles. Three alternative-fuel based vehicles including compressed natural gas based, liquid petroleum gas based, and biodiesel based vehicles were studied by the developed method, and the sustainability sequence of these three scenarios from the most sustainable to the least is biodiesel based vehicle, compressed natural gas based vehicle and liquid petroleum gas based vehicle, thus, China's administration should give the first priority to biodiesel based vehicle under the current context of China. The results were validated by the fuzzy TOPSIS method, and sensitivity analysis was also carried out to test the effects of the weights of the evaluation criteria on the sustainability order of the three alternative-fuel based vehicles.