Futuristic airport: A sustainable airport design by integrating hesitant fuzzy SWARA and hesitant fuzzy sustainable quality function deployment

The interest of researchers and airport authorities towards sustainable airports is increasing day by day. Futuristic airport designs will be innovative in achieving sustainable development practices such as clean and affordable energy, protection of natural resources, waste reduction, natural features and green space around an airport, sustainable transportation system, natural storm water management of airports, etc. In classical Quality Function Deployment, crisp numbers are used to determine the priorities of the passenger requirements, design requirements, and their relationship matrix to evaluate airport quality. However, vagueness and impreciseness are inevitable uncertainties in those kinds of human judgments, which are generally realized by linguistic terms, and traditional Quality Function Deployment is not associated with “sustainability.” The main contribution of this paper is to present a new approach that integrates Hesitant Fuzzy Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis and Hesitant Fuzzy Sustainable Quality Function Deployment method to enhance the sustainable airport quality. Hesitant fuzzy set theory reflects the hesitancy in human nature while making a decision to the fuzzy numbers, compared to other fuzzy set theories, such as traditional fuzzy sets, type-2 fuzzy sets, etc. In this study, the importance degrees of sustainable passenger requirements were evaluated by considering Hesitant Fuzzy Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis in the first stage of Hesitant Fuzzy Sustainable Quality Function Deployment method. Then sustainable design requirement was prioritized to develop the sustainable quality management of the airport. Finally, a case study concerning the sustainable development of the airport was used to elucidate the feasibility and rationality of the proposed framework. The results obtained from the case study showed that Hesitant Fuzzy Sustainable Quality Function Deployment could be a practical and structural methodology in the early planning stage of a sustainable airport design.