Parking Lot Site Selection Using a Fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS Framework in Tuyserkan, Iran

Abstract

The increasing population growth and subsequent rise in vehicle use highlight the necessity of efficient urban planning and supporting effective transportation systems. Experiencing the same challenges as many cities in developing countries, the study area targeted in this research suffers from inadequate public parking sites. The historical background of the city and hosting tourists, population growth, traditional design of the city with narrow streets and passages, and lack of effective municipal planning in the past are the factors that signify the necessity of establishing new public parking sites. Siting new parking lots requires application of an efficient location selection approach to minimize the corresponding economic and environmental costs. That is, siting a parking lot at a location is economically reasonable and socially acceptable when multiple economic, social, and environmental criteria are considered. Hence, the present study uses an efficient hybrid multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) method by coupling the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) methods under a fuzzy environment (i.e., fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS) to effectively address site selection criteria and uncertainties associated with a decision-making process for locating a new public parking lot.