Industrial Wastes Risk Ranking with TOPSIS, Multi Criteria Decision Making Method

Abstract

Today, various types of industrial waste are produced in different industries to meet human demands. Growth in quantity as well as complication in quality of these wastes are followed by the advance of technology. Management of such wastes need a proper identification and comprehensive understanding of the risk, emerging after the harmful characteristics of the wastes and negatively affect the human and environment health. Wastes risk ranking systems, in this regard, links between the industrial wastes indices and mathematical method/algorithm, being able at estimation of the risk level as well as comparison between the wastes of an industrial unit based on the risk level. Complexity of the method, high computational costs and lack of proper description of waste using selected indices in former studies has led to the proposal of an applicable and flexible method. In this study, the “TOPSIS Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) method” was developed in order for ranking the risk of various industrial wastes. Totally, a number of 9 subsidiary indices on the human health and 11 subsidiary indices on the environment health was identified and employed. Finally, the proposed waste risk ranking system was used for ranking 9 types of identified industrial waste in three industrial section. Results show that the “TOPSIS MCDM”, due to the lack of complexities in method and limited computational costs, is an efficient and appropriate method for ranking industrial wastes.