Hybrid Use of Likert Scale-Based AHP and PROMETHEE Methods for Hazard Analysis and Consequence Modeling (HACM) Software Selection

Being a decision-making process, software evaluation and selection is complicated, time-consuming, costly and also critical to the success of the project/work/organization. In this study, evaluation and selection of customized software which are used to identify the physical effect (explosion, fire and toxic emission) distances for industrial establishments containing, using or storing hazardous chemicals has been considered. These software are called the "Hazard Analysis and Consequence Modeling" (HACM) software in the literature. This study first prepared Likert scale-based questionnaires which were distributed to Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) professionals to obtain their opinions. Likert scale was used with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method in the processing of data obtained from questionnaires in order to get over the inconsistency problem of pairwise comparison matrices. The Likert scale-based AHP method was used to determine the weights of the criteria, and Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE) method was used to obtain the final ranking. PROMETHEE method was preferred for having the opportunity of evaluating the binary "Yes-No" questions in the solution process. Finally, application results were given to illustrate the proposed method by using the PROMETHEE software "Visual PROMETHEE 1.4.0.0".