Fuzzy logic as a decision-making support tool in planning transport development

Deliberations on transport development indicate that planning is its most significant aspect. One of the key issues in planning is selecting infrastructure projects for completion that will contribute to achieving the development objectives. The important functions of planning, as well as its complexity, indicate the need to use solutions in the decision-making support field. In Poland, in the area of strategic planning of infrastructure development, methods of supporting decision-making aimed at selecting infrastructure projects, taking into account their degree of compliance with strategic goals, are currently not applied comprehensively. The paper aims to address this gap with MCDA solution basing on review of literature combined with the authors’ experience in transport planning. Therefore, authors presented a proposed tool for supporting decision-making in planning transport development on a strategic level. The presented method allows for assessing infrastructure development projects in road and rail transport. Such assessments take into account a number of criteria corresponding to the main development directions, i.e. sustainable development and quality of life. Due to the method of formulating development objectives, it has been decided that it will be advantageous to apply fuzzy logic, which enables using natural language in decision-making support systems. To allow practical application of fuzzy logic, the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox package available in the MATLAB environment has been employed. The developed model contains a structure along with defined linguistic variables reflecting the decision-making criteria; also, it includes membership functions, inference rules as well as assessment results. The paper also defines the algorithm of decision-making support procedure. For verification purposes, the decision support model was applied in several real-life project evaluation cases, including a variety of projects in construction, development, and renovation of rail and road infrastructure. The deliberations described in this paper indicate the usefulness of fuzzy logic for supporting decision-making in planning transport development. It’s beneficial that the defined criteria can be applied in the case of projects in early preparation phase, enabling their practical application. Implementation of the solution in the MATLAB Fuzzy Logic Toolbox enables achieving fast results of the assessment of decision-maker preference level.