Efficacy Evaluation of Maritime AtoN by Fuzzy AHP Approach

The maritime Aids to Navigation (AtoN) plays a vital role in ensuring safety and efficiency of the water transport. The efficacy evaluation of AtoN is closely associated with the arrangement of navigation aids in both river and port waters. Qualitative description methods are known as convenient but sometimes subjective. A few attempts in the literature review have been conducted for quantitative evaluation. In the present study, a numerical model has been presented by adopting Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy theory. The index evaluation system is established considering the characteristics of the navigation channels in the research domain. The weight of each index is then determined. The judgment matrix is finally combined with the data analysis of the expert questionnaire to achieve quantitative evaluation of the AtoN efficacy. The results indicate that the efficacy of AtoN is overall favorable (with a mean value of 8.0 out of 10) under current arrangement. The proposed quantitative evaluation method could provide a guidance for maritime safety administration.