A novel multiobjective programming approach dealing with qualitative and quantitative objectives for environmental management

Environmental management problems are very complex and require considering numerous factors, such as environmental, economic, and social aspects. Qualitative and quantitative data always exist simultaneously in real world decision-making situations. A novel multiobjective programming approach is proposed in this study to solve qualitative and quantitative objectives for environmental management problems. This approach integrates the multiattribute and multiobjective decision-making methods and contains three main steps to solve the multiobjective programming problems, including formulation of the decision model, the alternatives prioritization by the fuzzy AHP method, and solving the model. A case study of food waste management conducted in Taiwan is used to demonstrate the practicality of this approach.