Life cycle approach in sustainability assessment for petroleum refinery projects with fuzzy-AHP

摘要

Infrastructure projects, which include a wide range of construction and energy projects, play an important role amid other industrial projects. In this regard, petroleum refinery industry projects are one of the leading manufacturing industries in the world and have the most notable position in the energy industry projects. Developing petroleum refinery industry projects are one of the principal contributors to economic and social development. In spite of the necessity of country development, this development has to be sustained at least in economic, social, and environmental matters (pillars of sustainable development) particularly after the Brundtland Commission Report in 1987. In this paper, it is proposed to simplify the evaluation process of life cycle sustainability versus life cycle stages. Thus, an indicator-based approach is used in order to evaluate the sustainability along different stages of petroleum refinery industry projects. Also, a multi-level hierarchy of criteria decision making is defined by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), combined with a fuzzy set theory to enhance the reliability of the results. The outputs of this paper will be helpful for decision makers in many ways such as the most important stage with regard to sustainable development matters; or the most important pillars (economic, social, and environmental) of sustainability in each life cycle stage. Also, other valuable outputs based on the results are consequently discussed.