Hydrogen storage station location selection in sustainable freight transportation via intuitionistic hesitant decision support system

Highlights

• We deal with the hydrogen refueling station location selection problem in urban areas.

• Scenario alternatives and selection criteria were given by transportation and local authority experts.

• An ensemble of intuitionistic fuzzy models is constructed.

• All models indicate the Steiner points of the imposed communication tree as preferable locations.

• Strategic decision making for the sustainability of European metropolitan cities.

Abstract

Increasingly fierce competition in energy industry for alternative fuels has raised demand for fuel storage stations to be one of the pivots towards sustainable urban freight transportation. For zero-emission hydrogen-powered vehicles, these demands focus mostly on storage capacity and refueling-station location selection to maximize freight forwarding efficiency in major urban regions. This research proposes a Decision Support System (DSS) for hydrogen storage station location selection based on Intuitionistic Hesitant Fuzzy (IHF) methodologies. An ensemble of four methods were analyzed and applied for the use case of Larissa city urban region, central Greece. Fifteen evaluation criteria were imposed by experts from the transportation department and the local competent authorities, spanning to hydrogen infrastructure, socioeconomics and fleet and road network. Scenarios such as energy efficiency, pollution prevention and public acceptance in conjunction to the risk and safety considerations play a critical role in the process. All qualitative indicators were represented by triangular intuitionistic fuzzy numbers. The ensemble produced the same ranking indicating the Steiner point locations of the imposed communication tree on the road network as the most preferable scenario.

Introduction

The transition from fossil to renewable energy modes is one of the major societal issues in Europe nowadays. At this juncture, hydrogen is gaining popularity to become a major vehicle fuel type promising to be a sustainable and clean energy source [1]. This development has increasingly penetrated almost all European countries, implying that there is differentiation from centralized supply chain models. In parallel, multi-agent and fully decentralized supply chains seem to overcome all obstacles emanated by the region's complicated topography [2]. However, there are still considerable issues related to the efficiency of hydrogen production and consuming using various renewable energy sources. Furthermore, in order to achieve truly sustainable hydrogen-oriented transportation [3], hydrogen must not only be produced but also stored, used and consumed in sustainable ways [4]. Despite all aforementioned obstacles, hydrogen road transportation demonstrates great potential for financial returns, setting the supply station locations to be essential for the technical and financial viability of the transportation sector [5]. At the same time, low carbon supply chains have become a critical factor for achieving a green economy. Optimized transportation management in supply chains promises to reduce carbon emissions across the whole process. In this context, the key challenge is not only to select a low carbon supplier but also to reduce the communication cost selecting near optimal locations of the supplier stations [6]. The sector of freight transportation is the most critical mode due to its significant involvement in the logistics chain [7].

The current state of technology involves mostly a centralized approach towards commercialization of hydrogen consuming in urban areas. As a result, the same holds for freight transportation [8]. This approach has been preferred so far since it minimizes the functional and operational cost. However, for heavily urbanized areas and especially for multiple freight distribution sites, single supplier locations increase the communication cost. On the opposite site, if hydrogen supplier and distributor sites coexist at the same location, functional and communication cost are minimal. Unfortunately, in lots of cases there are several risk considerations that do not allow for the later to be operated [9]. Based on the arguments above, in this paper we are interested in a location selection strategy of hydrogen supplier stations in a fuel-vehicle transportation mode network that must be imposed based on the freight requirements oof urban areas. More precisely, we measure the sustainable transport indicators and how these impact a performance model of minimum environmental impact. Moreover, assuming resource infrastructure and technology availability, we concentrate on the social (e.g., risk of the fuel usage, emergency rescue facilities infrastructure etc.), economic, and environmental aspects of such transportation strategic planning [10].

It is crucial and generally realized to shift from the current status of transport sector fuel consumption (sector is responsible of causing a big negative impact on climate change as the primate source of fuel is still crude oil [11], consuming 61.2% of the globe's oil resources) by adopting alternatives such as eco-driving. Moreover, there is need to establish Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methodologies to evaluate biofuel alternatives such as hydrogen to determine ideal solutions. Focusing on the hydrogen supplier station selection problem, this carries fuzzy characteristics due to the interoperability of several diverse aspects such as associated infrastructure, demography, economy environment and other social issues that should be taken into account. However, there are two inter-correlated components that must be addressed, regardless of the methodology used: (a) the dimension element of the hydrogen refueling infrastructure (urban limits within the infrastructure should be extended) and (b) number and locations of hydrogen refueling stations. Limited number of placed stations extends underutilization of the network where, conversely limited area coverage does not cover transportation needs increasing the communication cost. The quality/performance of such network must be the most critical priority due to the high capital expenditures needed for the infrastructure and due to the risks/uncertainties initiated to the society and the stakeholders of such projects. For this MCDM problem several fuzzy methodologies have been proposed, most of them however without dealing with the idea of weighted average of the degree of hesitation between their membership functions, the involving of score functions in the ranking of various criteria attributes and the necessary sensitivity analysis [12].

To cope with these uncertainties, in this paper we introduce a repertoire of intuitionistic fuzzy set methods in an extended framework of the fuzzy set theory including: (a) the Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (IFWASPAS) [13], (b) the Complex Proportional Assessment (IFCOPRAS) [14], (c) the Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution (IFEDAS) [15], and the Combinative Distance based Assessment (IFCODAS), [16].

The innovation of this paper lies on the creation of an inventive DSS that proposes hydrogen storage location selection policies in a region. For this selection criterion (locations of hydrogen refueling stations) no prior research exists. Additionally, the DSS outcome is based on a unique ensemble of intuitionistic fuzzy systems that does not consider only the positive responses by the experts but also counts in the hesitation and uncertainty aspects on their opinion. This promotes the DSS significance as, its outcome is directly related to the environmental, social, economic, and safety impacts of a region. Furthermore, the design of the DSS is open-ended, allowing participant expansion in aggregating criteria evaluations. The dynamic criteria selection allows the framework to be adopted for a variety of policy making problems while at the same time, it may include additional methodologies related to intuitionistic fuzzy theory such as Pythagorean and interval valued.