A dynamic interaction assessment method for disaster management based on extended DEMATEL

With the frequent occurrence of various disasters, serious damage has been caused to social and economic development. Therefore, disaster management plays an increasingly significant role in controlling disasters and reducing losses. This study aims to provide a dynamic interaction assessment method for the emergency management department to manage disasters. For this purpose, the classical Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method is first extended with bipolar 2-tuple linguistic information to model both the negative and positive influences among factors involved in coping with disaster. Then, the weights of influential factors are determined according to their total interaction relationships derived by extended DEMATEL. After that, the performances or states of factors are suggested to be appraised under a bipolar 2-tuple linguistic environment. Further, the performance or state simulation rule of factors is proposed based on their initial states and the interactions among them during disaster management. According to the simulation results, a weighted average operator is employed to obtain the overall performance values of emergency scenarios. Finally, an illustrative example and comparative analysis are presented for elucidating the feasibility and usefulness of the suggested method. Results of a case study show that the proposed method has the abilities to capture the interactions among influential factors and explore how the factors and their interactions affect disaster management. The proposed method could provide valuable information to emergency management departments for managing disasters more effectively.