An IT2FBWM Model to Highlight the Significance of Factors Utilized in Determining Pandemic Hospital Site Selection

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread to the world in a short time since its emergence in Wuhan, China, and mobilized international health authorities with its effects, continues its development seriously. Due to the fast spread of COVID-19, governments have made some decisions to build new temporary hospitals for patients infected with COVID-19. This situation increased the importance of the site selection process for a pandemic hospital during the current critical time. Site selection of a hospital can be considered as multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem since it includes multiple factors. This paper applies an analytical tool for evaluating the criteria of the site selection of a pandemic hospital. For this purpose, the extended best–worst method with trapezoidal interval type-2 fuzzy numbers (IT2FBWM) is employed to determine the importance weights of the pandemic hospital site selection criteria. The paper's findings point out that the IT2FBWM model can help decision-makers determine the importance weights of the criteria used in the pandemic hospital siting decisions. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.