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Bridge management includes all actions in the life cycle of the bridge, to ensure its safety, stability, and functionality. Numerous problems have been identified that are primarily related to the organization of planning and the role of decision-making in the reconstruction of the historic pedestrian bridges. The planning process for the reconstruction of these bridges is crucial due to increased traffic load, poor condition, or damage to bridges. Some of these bridges are part of the cultural heritage, while some are unfairly neglected. The motivation for this research arose from the need to establish the priority for the reconstruction of historic pedestrian bridges to achieve their safety, stability, functionality, and cultural preservation. For this reason, a new decision support model based on intuitionistic fuzzy group decision-making to the multi-criteria analysis is created. The model combines multi-criteria method Evaluation Based on Distance from Average Solution and grey relational degree (GRD) with intuitionistic fuzzy theory. Three relevant decision groups of experts are formed, with the knowledge and expertise in the area of research problematic, establishing criteria for the evaluation. A new approach to the consistency of criteria weights is proposed. The intuitionistic fuzzy likelihood function is developed for the aggregation of bridge evaluations. Furthermore, GRD values are calculated to determine the reconstruction priority ranking of bridge for each decision group. The final ranking is defined by integrating Integer Linear Programming (ILP) and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), determining spatial-functional, time, and financial constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon known as urban heat islands (UHIs) is becoming more common and widespread, especially in large cities and metropolises around the world. The main cause of these temperature variations between the city center and the suburbs is the replacement of large tracts of natural land with artificial (built-up) surfaces that absorb solar heat and radiate it back at night. UHIs have been the subject of numerous studies, most of which were about defining the main characteristics, factors, indexes, etc., of UHIs using remote sensing technologies or about determining mitigating activities. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the literature, as well as a bibliometric analysis, to discover research trends related to the application of decision support systems and multi-criteria decision-making for UHI management, with a special emphasis on fuzzy theory. Data collection is conducted using the Scopus bibliographic database. Throughout the literature review, it was found that there were not many studies on multi-criteria analysis and decision support system applications regarding UHIs. The fuzzy theory application was also reviewed, resulting in only a few references. However, this topic is current, with an increase in published papers, and authors see this as an opportunity for improvement and further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problems in real life usually involve uncertain, inconsistent and incomplete information. An example of such problems is strategic decision making with respect to remediation planning of historic pedestrian bridges. The multiple decision makers and experts, as well as the various mutually conflicting criteria, unknown criteria weights, and vagueness and duality in final decisions, provide motivation to develop a methodology that is able to resist the challenges implicit in this problem. Therefore, the aim of this research was to propose an algorithm based on the theory of rough neutrosophic sets in order to solve the problem of strategic planning with respect to the remediation of historic pedestrian bridges. A new multicriteria decision-making model is developed that is a fusion of rough set and neutrosophic set theory. A new cross entropy is proposed under a rough neutrosophic environment that does not possess the shortcomings of asymmetrical character and unknown occurrences. Additionally, a weighted rough neutrosophic symmetric cross entropy is proposed. Furthermore, a rough neutrosophic VIKOR method is introduced, with which the values of the utility measure, regret measure and VIKOR index are obtained. These values, as well as the weighted rough neutrosophic symmetric cross entropy measure, are used to provide a ranking of historic pedestrian bridges favorable to remediation. Finally, an illustrative example of the strategic planning of remediation for historic pedestrian bridges is solved and compared to other research, demonstrating the robustness, feasibility and efficacy of the model when dealing with complex multicriteria decision-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]