Assessing the performance of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) railways based on an integrated Entropy-MARCOS approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31181/oresta20402013bKeywords:
Railways, Sub Saharan Africa, Performance, Entropy, MARCOS, Multi-criteria decision makingAbstract
In this study, the performance of Sub-Saharan African railways systems (SSA) is assessed by using an integrated Entropy-MARCOS (Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to COmpromise Solution) - based methodology. In the first phase, the Entropy method is employed to determine the weights of each sub-criterion of the decision model. This process identifies six main criteria, i.e., safety, security, internal business perspective, intermodal perspective, innovation and learning perspective, and customer satisfaction which are further supplemented by 13 sub-criteria. MARCOS is later used to rank the countries based on their railway performance assessment. After the results have been obtained, the created model was validated throughout comparisons with seven other multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods. The results of the study indicate that the most weighted sub-criterion is the labor productivity (internal business perspective criteria) followed by the terrorist incidence (security criteria) and the number of employees going through training/exposure sessions (innovation and learning perspective criteria). Moreover, it was revealed that Kenya ranked first position in terms of its railway performance followed by Ethiopia, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Ghana.
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