Ranking and Selection of Water Meters With the Technique of Multi Attribute Decision Making; Entropy and TOPSIS

Choosing a water meter for a household is one of the major issues in water and wastewater companies. In recent years, due to the increase in the number of subscribers, increase in the number of accident due to the inadequacy of water meters, also various parameters of the water meter and environmental and regional conditions, the selection of water meters is more evident. The decision maker needs to select the most suitable water meter to achieve the desired output at a lower cost and his ability.
Studies show that there is no research on the use of MADM techniques in the field of water meter selection for household use. In the research of industrial and volumetric meters, also only a few parameters have been investigated and according to the researcher's opinion, the solution has been presented without considering the quantitative effect of factors. In the present research, first, the key attribute for evaluation of the meters are identified. Then based on the Entropy method and opinion of industry experts, the weight of criteria is calculated. Then, TOPSIS technique attempts to present a strategy for water and wastewater companies to choose suitable meters for home appliances.
Finally, the calculations for meters’ attribute determine the relative importance of attribute and also water meter ranking, which can be used for selection of the water meters.
According to the results of this research, the order for selecting the water meters is presented, that semiconductor multi-jet meters ranked in the first order.