Multicriteria Decision-Making Approach for Highway Slope Hazard Management

Abstract

Instability of roadway slopes and embankments is a type of geohazard that can endanger the traveling public and the nearby roadway facilities when large and sudden slope movement occurs. Frequently, the decision regarding managing the hazards associated with potential highway slope failures or incipient failures is based on subjective judgment. In this paper, the linguistic fuzzy theory is used to express the hazard level associated with each selected hazard assessment criterion. The multicriteria decision-making technique is also used in this paper to allow for combination of the hazard criteria involving different units. As an example illustrating the application of the developed method for assessing the hazard level and priority for repair in regard to the slope instability related geohazard, the pertinent information of a database containing 37 landslides sites in Ohio is used to go through the exercise of hazard assessment. From the presented illustrative example, it is shown that the proposed multicriteria decision-making approach promotes a better decision for managing the geological hazards due to roadway slope failures.