A MCDA framework for the remediation of zapadnoe uranium mill tailings: a fuzzy approach

We propose a theoretical framework based on MCDA and fuzzy logic to analyze remediation alternatives for the Zapadnoe uranium mill tailings (Ukraine).We account for potentially conflicting economic, social, radiological and environmental objectives, which are included in an objective hierarchy. Fuzzy rather than precise values are proposed for use to evaluate remediation alternatives against the different criteria and to quantify preferences, such as the weights representing the relative importance of criteria. Remediation alternatives are evaluated by means of a fuzzy additive multi-attribute utility function and ranked on the basis of the similarity of the respective trapezoidal fuzzy number representing their overall utility to the anti-ideal point.