Design Factors for Sustainable University Campus via Interval Type 2 Fuzzy Set

Abstract

Sustainable development has gained importance in recent years as a development model that aims to create environmental awareness for future generations within the economic and social development goals of the countries. Sustainable development is concerned with the effective and efficient use of rapidly declining natural resources for the growing population. The achievement of the goals determined in sustainable development and the transfer to the next generations is realized through sustainable education. Due to the innovative and pioneering role of universities in society, they are the most important educational institutions that contribute to the spread of a sustainable lifestyle in society. In this study, Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Quality Function Deployment (IT2_FQFD) approach was developed to improve sustainable university attributes. Firstly, the most important 12 sustainability criteria (SRs) were weighted with Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (IT2_FAHP). Then QFD approach was used to determine the importance of sustainability factor of university campus, the relations between SRs and SDs, and the correlations matrix among SDs via interval type-2 fuzzy sets. After that, the design attributes were ranked with fuzzy trade-off method. The fuzzy trade-off is a novel ranking method covering all of the solution space in order to find an optimal solution in decision-making problems with conflict criteria. This paper is the first study that presents a new method of combined IT2_FQFD and IT2_FAHP, which evaluates the sustainable university model considering the needs of student and academicians. As a result of this study, the most appropriate SDs were determined and ranked according to their importance level.