Early stage multi-criteria decision support system for recommending slope repair methods

ABSTRACT The selection of appropriate slope repair methods for the restoration of failed slopes is challenging at the early-stage of the decision-making process due to the limited available geotechnical information. At this early-stage, the limited experience of a few maintenance personnel often dominates the selection of slope repair methods to restore failed slopes. Hence, some potential repair methods that may have better performance for the given slope conditions, could be overlooked. The objective of this study is to develop an early-stage multi-criteria decision-support system to rank and recommend slope repair methods for the restoration of failed slopes based on collective experience and knowledge of subject matter experts. This system evaluates potential slope repair methods based on several selection criteria, such as the impact on traffic, the service life of repair methods, the rapidity of repair to recommend the most appropriate repair methods for the slope restoration. A survey of subject matter experts was conducted to identify the possible slope repair methods. The importance of selection criteria was calculated using the entropy method. The resulting importance of criteria was then used by the technique for order preference by the similarity of ideal solution (TOPSIS) to rank and recommend potential slope repair methods.