ABSTRACT
Recently, sustainable route selection in intermodal transportation systems has received increasing attention in the literature. Indeed, intermodal route selection problems are much more complicated than unimodal, since the computational efficiency required to select the best path will considerably deteriorate by increasing the number of traffic and transportation modes, hubs, terminals, etc. Furthermore, complex multimodal logistics networks are commonly characterized by dynamically-changing conditions and multiple modes of simultaneous transportation operations. Based on these motivations, this research presents an improved extension of the weighted hierarchical fuzzy axiomatic design (WFAD) approach to select the best transport options by considering several sustainability factors. From the methodological perspective, the classical crisp axiomatic design (AD) method is extended by generating negative-valued information contents (overachievement) as well as positive-valued information contents (underachievement). Additionally, the classical WFAD method is also modified by incorporating the criteria hierarchy and negative-valued information contents. Finally, an evaluation procedure is also proposed by considering both total positive- and negative-valued information contents. To show the practicality and applicability of the proposed extensions, a real-life application of an international logistics company is also presented.
