Most sustainable transportation vehicles rely on alternative fuel sources such as
electricity, solar, wind, bio-fuels, and compressed natural gas (Capasso and Veneri
2014; Rose et al. 2013; Mabit and Fosgerau 2011; Arsie et al. 2010). Depending on
the type of alternative fuels, every transportation vehicle type (e.g. full electric
vehicles, hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles, and internal combustion/electric hybrids) has
its operational, environmental, and economic strengths and weaknesses. Therefore,
organizations need to evaluate the transport fleet requirements given their internal
economic goals and sustainability strategies. Although there has been some effort to
identify the attributes of alternative-fuel vehicles selection (Hsu et al. 2014;
Awasthi et al. 2011; Tzeng et al. 2005), a holistic framework does not exist. The
adoption of alternative-fuel vehicles requires a holistic consideration of economic,
environmental and social dimensions when making important purchasing decisions
(Byrne and Polonsky 2001). Yet, research on modeling transport fleet management
has been rather limited and studies focusing on managing sustainable vehicle
appraisal are virtually non-existent. In this chapter, we introduce a multi-criteria
decision-making (MCDM) model, integrating Rough Set theory and the VIKOR
method, for green transport fleet appraisal.
In the next section, we start the chapter by providing some background
information on sustainability-based corporate transport fleet evaluation and
selection. The hybrid MCDM model is then introduced. An illustrative example is
provided to build comprehension of the multi-methodology technique. Insights,
implications, limitations and future research directions are discussed in the
concluding section