Multi-criteria group decision-making framework for offshore wind farm site selection based on the intuitionistic linguistic aggregation operators

Abstract Offshore wind farms have been rapidly proposed owing to the promotion of sustainable development policies. Site selection contributes to the success of offshore wind farm projects and is a complex multi-criteria group decision-making problem. This paper proposes a multi-criteria group decision-making method based on the intuitionistic linguistic aggregation operators and applies it to the site selection decision-making process of offshore wind farm. To begin with, the intuitionistic linguistic numbers are introduced to deal with the uncertainty and fuzziness in decision-making. An optimization weighting model that comprehensively considers subjective and objective factors is then established, which can effectively reflect the correlations among the criteria. Furthermore, in view of the limited rational behavior of the decision-makers, an extended intuitionistic linguistic aggregation operator is defined, according to which the criteria values can be aggregated into a numerical value for comparison. Finally, a case study in China is conducted to verify the rationality and effectiveness of this method. The research results show that the offshore wind farm located in Laizhou, Dongying is the optimal site, and the ranking results of the alternatives are sensitive to the absolute risk aversion coefficient.