A hybrid decision-support framework for selecting sustainable domestic heating systems in cold climates

This study proposes a probabilistic hesitant fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making approach for assessing sustainable heating system alternatives under uncertain situations. The selection of heating systems is a major issue in sustainability in cold climate regions due to its high energy requirements. The proposed approach integrates the Probabilistic Hesitant Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (PHF-AHP) for determining the weights of decision criteria and the Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) for ranking alternatives. The probabilistic hesitant fuzzy approach allows decision-makers to reflect uncertainty and hesitation in decision-making under expert judgments by considering various membership values with their respective probabilities. To validate the proposed methodological framework, a case study of five heating system alternatives is presented. The results reveal that the proposed PHF-AHP-EDAS approach is reliable in ranking alternatives under ambiguity and uncertainty in sustainability decision problems.