Location selection of multimodal freight terminal under STEEP sustainability

Abstract Multimodal freight terminal (MFT) build a link to connect multiple modes of transport and provide a smooth flow of freight in the supply chain network. The sustainability measure of MFT can be viewed as a lever to uplift freight transportation sustainability. The MFT sustainability assessment involves several subjective criteria, incomplete criteria information, and vagueness in the group decision-making process. To keep above nature of the decision-making problem, this paper use intuitionistic fuzzy (IF) based MCDM framework for sustainability assessment. The IF method is suitable for incorporating experts importance degree in decision-making problem. The proposed sustainability framework includes social, technical, economic, environmental, and political (STEEP) sustainability dimension for assessment of MFT location. The framework considers twenty-five sub-criteria, including four new criteria for location assessment. The importance of STEEP criterion is computed by employing IF-analytic hierarchy process (IF-AHP). The proposed framework is validated with a case of Eastern dedicated freight corridor (EDFC) of India. The sustainability assessment of four alternative locations is measured by employing an IF based TOPSIS method. The computation result of the considered case shows that technical sustainability is the most important criteria for location selection, followed by economic criteria. The experts' varying importance based sensitivity analysis is the novelty of this paper. The sensitivity analysis depicts the robustness of the proposed framework. The managerial and theoretical implications of the study are presented. The resulting analysis helps transport policymakers in investment assessment for freight terminal.