Supportive emergency decision-making model towards sustainable development with fuzzy expert system

The major key attributes of decision-making during emergency to de-escalate disaster, reduce fatality and prevent asset loss are time and the efficiency of the process. Decision-makers faced the challenge of accessing adequate and precise information during emergency cases due to the time limitation, inadequate data on and about the disasters and thus decision-making process becomes complex and complicated. A well-advanced and developed mathematical tool is required to respond adequately in the presence of these challenges. The current study investigates the effects of post-flood management plans in Iran through sustainable development features in the possible early time. A new hybrid emergency decision-making approach integrating the best–worst method (BWM), Z numbers and zero‐sum game is proposed to ensure much more effective responses in realistic cases. The importance weights of criteria are computed using the BWM, the payoff assessments of decision-makers are collected employing the Z numbers, and finally, the zero‐sum game method is utilized to rank the alternative of emergency solutions. The proposed hybrid approach assists the decision-makers to deal decisively with the ambiguity associated with the data for assessing and evaluating the emergency circumstances. To show the efficiency of the proposed approach, a real-life example of the Golestan flood of 2019 is presented. More so, a comparison analysis is performed to assess the practicability and feasibility of the proposed hybrid approach. The result indicates that the proposed methodology has considerable merits compared with the existing tools and can adequately deal with these shortages. In this case, the aircraft emergency delivery system of the relief supplies is obtained as the best solution to the problem.