Application of A Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision- Making (MCDM) Approach for High-Speed Rail (HSR) Alignment Finalization

Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (HSR) project basically is a game-changer in the transport scene in India. Figuring out how to best lay those rails is a serious challenge that combines economics, tech specs, environmental flare and Heisted philosophies, all at the same time. In this paper, we're throwing out a GIS-based decision tool, which uses TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) to score and rank three possible routes for the new HSR corridor. We ran up GIS on key land-use stuff - how dense, for example, are the cities, where are the farms and patches of forest and how close everything is to water bodies. Those spatial details were then bundled with talk of money, safety checks, travel demand forecasts and limits on the environment to make a full decision matrix. TOPSIS helped us to rank the options the further from the "ideal" route, and we put the same weight for each factor. After crunching all that, Route No. 1 came out on top: It increases safety, cuts travel time, increases projected ridership and looks good on the balance sheet in the long run. And what's neat is this route makes use of tunnels in order to keep out of fragile spots like Thane Creek. Basically, our approach of using GIS - integrate TOPSIS added smoothness to the decision-making process - reduce human error, adds transparency to the decision process and provides a method of making decision, which can be copied and easily scalable. All of this also adds on to the growing knowledge on sustainable transport planning, especially spatial analysis intersecting with multi-criteria evaluation. And the best part? The same framework could totally work for other big project like highways, metros or pipelines.