A Quantitative Assessment of Effective Sustainable Waste Management using an AHP-TOPSIS Methodology in a Neutrosophic Environment (in India)

Waste management is a key to sustainable development and environmental safety, particularly in the environment of the fast evolving smart cities. This study proposes a new decision-making model that will assist in the process of choosing effective sustainable methods in waste management for smart cities. It compares the four methods of waste management in relation to seven factors. Two Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) are used i) Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and ii) Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) in a Neutrosophic Soft Set (NSS) environment. NSS have a more adaptive structure on dealing with the uncertainty and incapacity to be precise in the decision-making on waste management. In this methodology, AHP determines the weights of decision criteria, while TOPSIS ranks the effective waste management strategies for final selection. Ten professionals in the universities, industry, and government sector were used. This assessment was done by way of structured questionnaires of subjective opinions. As a result, the alternatives were ranked based on their closeness coefficient values as follows: A2 (0.632) > A1 (0.509) > A4 (0.352) > A3 (0.261). The given ranking shows that A2 is more effective than A1, A4, and A3.