Selection of most significant risk factors for Indian tunnel projects: an integrated fuzzy-based MCDM approach

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive fuzzy-based multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology to generate ranking of risk factors on Indian tunnel projects. The complexities and high costs involved in tunnelling projects create a strong necessity to look into quantitative risk assessment so as to prevent project underperformance. The analysis of large number of risk factors makes the task difficult. Thus, the present study attempts to address this challenge by developing a comprehensive framework for risk prioritization. In the previous work, critical risk factors (CRFs) were identified using Relative importance Index from the factor pool. The present study utilizes the Analytic Hierarchy Process approach for the identification of CRFs. The list of 25 critical factors, obtained by integrating both RII and AHP results, is further analyzed using the Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (Fuzzy TOPSIS), based on three criteria, probability of occurrence, impact and cost. The methodology developed in this work will help in selecting the most significant risk factors, thus substantially improving the risk analysis process on Indian tunnel projects. This study contributes towards the development of framework for risk prioritization which will be useful for researchers and practitioners.Keywords: Multi-criteria-decision-making (MCDM)risk prioritizationtunnel projectsfuzzy TOPSISAHPIndian tunnel projects AcknowledgementThe authors thank the anonymous reviewers who carefully reviewed the paper and whose suggestions were useful in improving the manuscript to a great extent.Competing interestsThe authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.Author contributionsNivedita Gogate and Abhaysinha Shelake contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Abhaysinha Shelake and Preetesh Band. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Nivedita Gogate and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.Compliance with Ethical standardsDisclosure of potential conflicts of interestThe authors have no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.Research involving human participants and/or animalsNot applicable.Informed consentNot applicable.Ethical approval, consent to participate and consent to publishNot ApplicableAvailability of data and materialsAll data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this article.