IoT Nodes Equipment Selection Based on MADM: A Case Study of Groundwater Quality Detection Equipment

With the advance of hydraulic fracturing technology and improvements in horizontal well drilling, the exploitation of natural gas supplies from deep shale formations has expanded. The groundwater pollution during shale gas mining cannot be neglected for the environment. With the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT) have permeated into our daily lives, providing measurements and collection tools to inform our every decision. Therefore, it is recommended to use IoT nodes equipment to detect the real-time quality of groundwater. The selection of IoT nodes equipment is an important issue which concerns the operational costs of corporations. This paper develops three methods to select suitable detection equipment of groundwater quality and provides solid foundations for detecting the quality of groundwater in real time. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is developed to determine the relative weights of the evaluation criteria; Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Multicriteria Optimization and Compromise Solution (VIKOR) are developed to rank the alternatives. The developed methods were verified using a synthetic case with the purpose of selecting the detecting equipment for the environment around shale gas wells in Yibin, Sichuan Province (southwest of China). The VIKOR method calculates the distance from the ideal solution. And the ranking index is an aggregation of all criteria, the relative importance of the criteria, and a balance between total and individual satisfaction. The TOPSIS method introduces the ranking index, including the distances from the ideal point and from the negative-ideal point. The research results could provide a reference of method for selecting the detection equipment of groundwater quality and hence protecting the groundwater resources.