TY - JOUR
T1 - Developing a sustainability-oriented multi-criteria game theoretical decision analysis framework: A case study of sludge management
AU - Liu, Yue
AU - Ren, Jingzheng
N1 - Funding Information:
The work described in this paper was supported by the grant from the Research Committee of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University under student account code RK2B and was also financially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council (Early Career Scheme) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Grand No. 25208118 ; Project ID: P0006219). .
Funding Information:
The tipping fee refers to a suggested amount which can convince the government to select the same option with STF, that is prefer S3 to S4, and maintaining the STF still interested in S3 in the situation of case study. According to the above discussion and analysis results, if a tipping fee of $0.19?7.59 per kWh net electricity generation during the sludge treatment process can be paid to the government, both stakeholders will be more preferred to the selection on Scenarios 3. The range of tipping fee is calculated based on the considered assumptions.Based on the sustainability assessment results and the weighting assignment of each group, sensitivity analysis results can be obtained and are shown in Fig. 5 and Table S.45 for STF, and Fig. 6 and Table S.46 for the Government, respectively. The value variations of sustainability index from the perspective of STF under different groups of weighting assignments are presented in Fig. 5. Since the weights of all the criteria for the Government were fixed, the outcome of payoff was consistent with the initial result in the case study (0.6491 for S4). Nevertheless, the sustainability index of STF varied with the weights changing. According to the calculation results, when the value of sustainability index exceeds that of the Government, the control of decision will belong to STF, and this party should pay a certain amount of tipping fee to convince the Government to change their selection. Fig. 5 also reveals that although the final decisions frequently changed from the perspective of STF, the ratio of SI's variation is around 20% (absolute value), which is not a large amplitude compared with that of the Government.According to the above analysis and discussion, it is safe to draw the conclusion that the proposed methodology framework has feasibility to solve the decision-making problem with the consideration of conflicting interests of different stakeholders as well as multiple criteria. Results obtained from the case study under the assumptions and conditions indicated the rationality and reliability of the methodology. In the case study, S3 or S4 was suggested by the final decision-making result. Although S3 was the final choice after the step of mutual agreement, S4 can also be selected by the two players through the similar process. In this situation, government should pay a certain amount of tipping fee to the STF to convince them and reach a consensus. Similar results were also suggested by previous studies (Liu et al., 2020b; Ren et al., 2017). These two studies analyzed the sustainability performances of several sludge-to-electricity technologies and both results indicated the priority of biogas from sludge digestion for electricity generation, that is S3 and S4 in this research, leading to the belief of the reliability of the strategy result obtained from the proposed method. Sensitivity analysis results revealed that the final decision-making result is relatively stable because of the balance of multiple stakeholders. Hence, the proposed methodology framework can be regarded to be robust.In this paper, a decision-making framework was constructed based on game theory and MCDM methods for sludge management. Eleven criteria covered environmental, economic, social, and technical aspects were considered to address the sustainability performances for the investigated strategies. An individual and group fuzzy BWM was applied to integrate the opinions of different experts for criteria weighting. A two-player game was established to address the decision-making problem and a mutual agreement step was added to help the stakeholders to finally reach a consensus. A case study was carried out to demonstrate the proposed framework. Four sludge valorization technical routes were investigated as the sludge treatment strategies. Sludge treatment facility and the government were involved as two players in the game for decision-making. According to the analysis results, the Nash equilibrium was provided by the strategy pair (S3, S4) for STF and the government with value (0.73, 0.65), respectively. A final agreement on selecting S3 for both players can be reached by STF paying a tipping fee within the range of $0.19?7.59 per kWh net electricity generation to the government. The results indicated that biogas for electricity generation by fuel cells can be competitive when the environmental aspect was important. Sensitivity analysis was also conducted to explore the influence of weighting variation on the different aspect for the two stakeholders and results revealed that the final strategy was usually determined by the dominant party, that is the stakeholder with higher sustainability index. Technical challenges still restrict the further promotion of sludge-to-energy technologies. Hence, improvement on the operating conditions and technical performance is still necessary for the sustainable management of sewage sludge.The work described in this paper was supported by the grant from the Research Committee of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University under student account code RK2B and was also financially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council (Early Career Scheme) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Grand No. 25208118; Project ID: P0006219).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/6/20
Y1 - 2022/6/20
N2 - Decision-making process can be influenced by many factors, including the interests and preferences of stakeholders, their interactions, as well as the considered criteria. This study constructs a methodology framework based on game theory and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to address the decision-making problem with conflicting interests of different parties for sustainable sludge management. The proposed framework compares the overall sustainability performances of the alternatives for the corresponding stakeholder based on the life cycle sustainability impacts and the weight of each criterion. The weights of considered criteria are determined by the opinions of different groups of stakeholders. Then, game theory is applied to assist the stakeholders share the costs and benefits and guide them to reach a consensus on the final selection for the sludge management technology. A case study applying the proposed framework to analyze the game between sludge treatment facility and the government was carried out. Four different sludge valorization technologies were selected as the alternative strategies for both players, including incineration for electricity production followed by landfill (S1), incineration for power generation followed by cement production (S2), biogas from sludge digestion for electricity generation by fuel cells (S3) and biogas from sludge digestion for electricity generation by combustion (S4). Results show that both the sludge treatment facility and the government may mutually benefit from S3 if the sludge treatment facility pays a tipping fee of $0.19–7.59 per kWh net electricity generation. Sensitivity analysis was also carried out to study the influence of weighting variations and parameter uncertainty on the final strategy selection and results revealed the stability of the proposed framework. The outcome of the framework can contribute to the sustainable decision-making process for the involved players and reach an agreement more efficiently.
AB - Decision-making process can be influenced by many factors, including the interests and preferences of stakeholders, their interactions, as well as the considered criteria. This study constructs a methodology framework based on game theory and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach to address the decision-making problem with conflicting interests of different parties for sustainable sludge management. The proposed framework compares the overall sustainability performances of the alternatives for the corresponding stakeholder based on the life cycle sustainability impacts and the weight of each criterion. The weights of considered criteria are determined by the opinions of different groups of stakeholders. Then, game theory is applied to assist the stakeholders share the costs and benefits and guide them to reach a consensus on the final selection for the sludge management technology. A case study applying the proposed framework to analyze the game between sludge treatment facility and the government was carried out. Four different sludge valorization technologies were selected as the alternative strategies for both players, including incineration for electricity production followed by landfill (S1), incineration for power generation followed by cement production (S2), biogas from sludge digestion for electricity generation by fuel cells (S3) and biogas from sludge digestion for electricity generation by combustion (S4). Results show that both the sludge treatment facility and the government may mutually benefit from S3 if the sludge treatment facility pays a tipping fee of $0.19–7.59 per kWh net electricity generation. Sensitivity analysis was also carried out to study the influence of weighting variations and parameter uncertainty on the final strategy selection and results revealed the stability of the proposed framework. The outcome of the framework can contribute to the sustainable decision-making process for the involved players and reach an agreement more efficiently.
KW - Sludge-to-energy technology
KW - Game theory
KW - Multi-criteria decision-making
KW - Sustainability assessment
KW - Fuzzy best-worst method
UR - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622014172
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85129407354&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131807
DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.131807
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0959-6526
VL - 354
JO - Journal of Cleaner Production
JF - Journal of Cleaner Production
M1 - 131807
ER -