Performance evaluation of sustainable projects: a possibilistic integrated novel analytic hierarchy process-data envelopment analysis approach using Z-Number information

Selecting a proper set of projects is an important issue to make crucial decisions for many project-oriented organizations enabling them to achieve their goals despite the existing operational constraints (resources, time, etc.) and competitive environments. Since the results and consequences of the selected projects have short-term and long-range effects on social, economic, and environmental conditions, sustainable development suggests considering both financial and non-financial factors simultaneously. Thus, paying attention to the principles of sustainable development and considering social and environmental criteria along with economic criteria will lead to proper selection of sustainable and balanced project portfolio. In this paper, first, the conventional sustainability criteria are identified and screened; afterward, the importance weights of them will be calculated using the Z-AHP approach. Then by utilizing the Z-DEA, the input and output sustainability criteria are identified and the efficiency of the undertaken projects is finally calculated. In this paper, the project efficiencies have been calculated once using the Z-DEA and once through the Z-AHP-DEA approach. The results show that when the importance weights of sustainability criteria obtained by the Z-AHP are being considered, it will affect the project efficiencies as well as the ranking of the projects and make it possible, to achieve a more effective solution applying the Z-AHP-DEA approach (modified importance weights are considered). The results of AHP, DEA, and AHP-DEA approaches have been compared with the results of certain and fuzzy conditions when the measure of expert opinions is calculated by Z-Number. It has been depicted that by shifting from certainty to uncertainty (certainty, fuzzy, Z-Number (fuzzy considering probability)) the answers get more effective and realistic and it also demonstrates that the proposed Z-AHP-DEA can be used for ranking of projects as a reliable approach.