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This paper develops a decision-making model to assist the improvement of the carrying capacity of ship locks by combing fuzzy logic, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, and the technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS). A three-level hierarchical structure is constructed to identify the key factors influencing the carrying capacity of ship locks from the aspects of ship locks, vessels, environment, and administration. On this basis, a series of targeted strategies have been put forward to improve the carrying capacity of ship locks, and the TOPSIS method is applied to rank these strategies in terms of their performance. A case study of the five-stage dual-track ship lock of the Three Gorges Dam in China has been conducted to demonstrate the feasibility and rationality of the proposed model, and correlation analysis is conducted to verify the identified influencing factors in order to eliminate potential bias which may be generated from using AHP. The results obtained from the proposed methods are consistent with the real-life situation to a certain extent, indicating that the proposed method can provide a useful reference for improving the carrying capacity of ship locks.
Shi et al. (Sat,) studied this question.