Multi-criteria selection of a deep-water port in the Eastern Baltic Sea

•A comprehensive framework was proposed for strategic selection of deep-water sea port's construction site.•A group decision-making procedure was proposed to deal with the conflictive opinion of DMs on preferences of criteria.•Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was proposed to achieve weights of criteria in a group decision-making problem.•A fuzzy ARAS (Additive Ratio Analysis) method was applied for measurement of alternatives preference ratio.•We find that model could to be applied for similar problems solution.

Sea ports play a significant role in the development of a modern economy. The Baltic Sea is an arterial transport corridor between Eastern and Western Europe. There is need to develop a deep-water sea port in the Klaipeda region to satisfy economic needs. This problem involves a multitude of requirements and uncertain conditions that have to be taken into consideration simultaneously. Numerous studies have been designated for the resolution of similar problems by employing multi-criteria as an aid. This paper proposes an integrated multi-criteria decision-making model to solve the problem. The backbone of the proposed model consists of a combination of Analytic Hierarchy (AHP) and Fuzzy Ratio Assessment (ARAS-F) methods. This model is presented as a form of decision aiding that could to be implemented when regarding any specific port or a like site selection.

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