A Hybrid DEMATEL-EDAS Based on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making for A Social Aid Distribution Problem

The office of social affairs has been helping poor or marginalized families through social aid in dealing with poverty. This social aid emphasizes decreasing the poverty rate and economic recovery affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the selection process in the previous year evaluated many families as aid recipient candidates through a conventional process selected by an officer. It would be vulnerable to subjectivity in assessment. Therefore, we attempted to develop a hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methodology to apply it to this particular decision-making process. This methodology amalgamated the DEMATEL method and the EDAS method with different tasks. Firstly, the DEMATEL method decided the feasible criteria weights automatically based on the proficient decision-maker assessment in estimating a pairwise criteria comparison. Secondly, the EDAS applied the criteria weight values to determine alternatives rank order based on the value of the appraisal score. After comparing with the VIKOR method, the hybrid DEMATEL-EDAS method demonstrated the stability and capability in dealing with the different influence parameters on the final results. © 2022 IEEE.

Determining Suitable Routes for Vaccine Distribution to Hospitals: Application of Ankara Province

With the COVID-19 epidemic, which started in Wuhan, China in 2019 and spread all over the world, changes in traditional practices began to occur and new problems emerged in parallel with these developments. These problems, which emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic, have become a subject that attracts the attention of researchers. In order for the world to cope with this epidemic more quickly, it is important to ensure community immunity by vaccinating the population both in our country and in the world. With the increase in the supply of vaccines, new problems arise such as determining the capacities of hospitals where vaccines will be administered, choosing hospitals where vaccines can be administered, and determining routes to distribute vaccines to hospitals. Vehicle routing problem first started to take its place in the literature in the 1950s, and today it is seen as an open problem area that can be adapted for the new problem under different assumptions. In this study, a mathematical model has been proposed in order to ensure that vaccines are transported from a distribution center to the hospitals where they will be administered, as soon as possible and at minimum cost. For this problem, a new mathematical model has been proposed by using the vehicle routing problem models in the literature. In order to test the effectiveness of the developed model, an application example was made for the province of Ankara and the problem was solved in the GAMS 24.3.1 program. By evaluating the results obtained in the solution of the problem, the minimum cost routes of the vehicles to visit the hospitals were determined.