Title: Evaluation of electronic maritime services using fuzzy logic techniques

Authors: G.N. Dourmas, N.V. Nikitakos, M.A. Lambrou

Addresses: Department of Shipping Trade and Transport, School of Business Studies, University of the Aegean, 2a Korai Str., GR Chios 82100, Greece. ' Department of Shipping Trade and Transport, School of Business Studies, University of the Aegean, 2a Korai Str., GR Chios 82100, Greece. ' Department of Shipping Trade and Transport, School of Business Studies, University of the Aegean, 2a Korai Str., GR Chios 82100, Greece

Abstract: Our paper proposes an innovative methodological approach in order to evaluate e-business services. We assume a Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) framework, where sets of general and domain-specific criteria are used to judge the relative performance of e-services under evaluation. In this paper we present the main characteristics of the evaluation framework, including the assessment of the evaluation criteria and their relative importance, the evaluation of the performance and the final ranking of e-services. The proposed methodology has the innovative feature of embodying techniques of fuzzy logic theory into the classical multicriteria decision analysis. We present an application of our methodology in the maritime sector where we assume an e-services platform model, which supports operational and commercial activities of shipping companies on the internet. In the presented case study, we apply the proposed methodology in order to evaluate six electronic maritime services using totally 16 criteria.

Keywords: multicriteria decision analysis; MCDA; fuzzy logic; shipping companies; electronic maritime services; e-services; e-business; electronic business.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBIS.2009.021600

International Journal of Business Information Systems, 2009 Vol.4 No.1, pp.1 - 24

Published online: 30 Nov 2008 *

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