Fuzzy Ordinal Decision‐Making Method: A New Multi‐Criteria Decision‐Making With Application to Circular Evaluation of Construction Projects

ABSTRACT Approaches that rely on pairwise comparisons frequently encounter challenges related to inconsistency and uncertainty in the complex realm of multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM), resulting in potential decision‐making errors. This article introduces the fuzzy ordinal decision‐making method (FODM) as a novel MCDM approach for addressing inconsistency and uncertainty concerns. This novel approach employs the concept of ordinal criteria comparison to effectively overcome the limitations inherent in conventional pairwise comparison methods and produces a more dependable and consistent decision‐making framework. Moreover, leveraging the power of fuzzy logic, FODM effectively manages uncertainties in decision processes. The results of our study indicate that FODM outperforms existing fuzzy pairwise comparison‐based MCDM methods, as evidenced by the evaluation of three distinct numerical examples. In addition, the efficiency of FODM is investigated through a case study in the field of circular evaluation of construction projects. When compared to other pairwise comparison methods, our method uses fewer pairwise comparisons, resulting in full consistency. This paper meaningfully contributes to the field of decision science by improving current approaches and laying the groundwork for more precise decision‐making procedures in future research.