Coupled multi-criteria decision-making method: A new approach for environmental impact assessment of industrial companies

Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods have various applications in different fields of science. These methods can also be used as environmental impact assessment (EIA) approaches. The diversity of results of different MCDM methods has led to the development of integration strategies. In this research, the EIA of a coal washing plant in Iran has been carried out by using MCDM methods comprising TOPSIS, PROMETHEE, and ELECTRE. In addition, the results of various MCDM-EIA methods were combined using the most well-known integration strategies: Borda, Copeland, and Kohler. The final MCDM-EIA results ranked the environmental components of the coal washing plant. Ecology, Landscape, and Human health risks were recognized to be the most critical environmental components for the plant. Fuzzy AHP and Monte-Carlo AHP methods produced the best results among various MCDM methods and had the same results as the final integration method. Finally, a method was proposed to evaluate the impacting factors of the plant. This method, which is called development plan evaluation (DPE), identifies the most influential factors based on the MCDM-EIA process. By using the DPE approach, it is possible to revise the factory process and identify the harmful effects of an industrial project.