Integrated EFA-AHP decision-making framework for fixed offshore wind energy substructures

초록

Offshore wind energy projects require careful planning because of their high initial costs and technical complexities. Selecting an appropriate substructure is important for ensuring project feasibility and cost efficiency. However, conventional decision-making approaches, such as the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), do not account for correlations among evaluation criteria, potentially compromising the reliability of outcomes and biasing the associated assessments toward certain criteria. To address this limitation, this study proposes an integrated exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and AHP decision-making framework to ensure statistical independence, and minimizes redundancy among criteria. EFA first extracts independent latent factors from correlated evaluation criteria, enhancing the construct validity of the evaluation structure and allowing the subsequent AHP to be conducted with fewer, independent factors. This minimizes bias and improves consistency in expert judgments. A comparative analysis with the conventional AHP showed that the integrated framework yields more consistent and distinct weight distributions, achieving a 75.41% reduction in the coefficient of variation and a 3.08-fold increase in the signal-to-noise ratio. Overall, using our framework, project planners can identify the most suitable substructure type in the early planning stages, facilitating more intuitive decision-making.

키워드