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Bottled water quality ranking via the multiple-criteria decision-making process: a case study of two-stage fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS

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Abstract

Access to healthy drinking water is vital to human health and development. Bottled water consumption has been on the rise in recent years. As several chemical and bacteriological parameters affect bottled water quality, it is difficult to choose the highest-quality bottled water. Numerous studies have proposed the use of multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods to overcome this problem. Herein, the two-stage fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method were adopted to rank different brands of bottled water. The FAHP approach allows working at the intervals of judgment rather than absolute values. TOPSIS is a technique for ordering performance based on its similarity to the ideal solution. An expert panel selected and classified the criteria and sub-criteria. A pairwise comparison questionnaire was then developed, and the weights of the criteria and sub-criteria were assigned by water quality experts. The data on the quality of different brands of water were collected from the Iranian bottled water database. The final data analysis and weight determination of each parameter were performed in Excel and R software Programs. Finally, the CCi (value of closeness coefficient) and rank of 71 bottled water brands were calculated, and the best brand was introduced. Among the selected criteria, carcinogenic chemical compounds with the weight of 0.368 were the most important compound in ranking bottled water brands, followed by bacteriologic, pathogenic chemical compounds, chemical compounds important in terms of toxicity, nutritious chemical compounds with a low toxicity level, chemical compounds related to esthetic effects, and chemical compounds without health effects, respectively.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors hereby express their gratitude to the Tehran University of Medical Sciences for assisting us in conducting this study.

Funding

This study was conducted as an environmental health engineering MS thesis at the School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, under financial supports, with the project code: 42913, 9511388013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran

    Ramin Nabizadeh, Kamyar Yaghmaeian, Mahmood Alimohammadi & Zahra Mokhtari

  2. Department of Environmental Health Engineering, School of Public Health, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran

    Samira Yousefzadeh

  3. Students’ Scientific Research Center (SSRC), Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

    Samira Yousefzadeh

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  1. Ramin Nabizadeh
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  2. Samira Yousefzadeh
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  3. Kamyar Yaghmaeian
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  4. Mahmood Alimohammadi
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  5. Zahra Mokhtari
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Contributions

Ramin Nabizadeh: conceptualization, methodology, validation, project administration, funding; Samira Yousefzadeh: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation writing-original draft, writing-review and editing, visualization, supervision; Kamyar Yaghmaeian: supervision, writing-review and editing, investigation; Mahmoud Alimohammadi: supervision, writing-review and editing, investigation; Zahra Mokhtari: conceptualization, methodology, validation, investigation writing-original draft, writing-review and editing, visualization, supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zahra Mokhtari.

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The study was approved by the ethical committee of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Ethics code: IR.TUMS.SPH.REC.1397.277.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nabizadeh, R., Yousefzadeh, S., Yaghmaeian, K. et al. Bottled water quality ranking via the multiple-criteria decision-making process: a case study of two-stage fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 20437–20448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16931-7

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