According to the reality of the comparison of port projects' plane layout alternatives, the paper develops the traditional AHP method and applies it in the comparison of port projects' plane layout alternatives. Then, the paper takes Q port's certain wharf for example to prove the correctness of the developed method and the feasibility of applying it in the comparison of port projects' plane layout alternatives. Simultaneously, the paper designs a universal computer program, through which the investing party can easily select the optimal alternative. In addition, the paper lists several evaluation indexes as a reference.
As is known to all, port projects are very significant to a country. Not only because their investment are very huge, but also because port projects always impact deeply on a country's national economy, society, environment and so forth. Therefore, before the project establishment, feasibility study plays a very important role. Subsequently, selecting the optimal alternatives from plane layout alternatives, in another word, the comparison of the plane layout alternatives is the key. Nowadays, the traditional method is just to compare quantitative indexes, for example, economic indexes and technical indexes, ignoring qualitative indexes which are usually very important, or use simple method, for example, the Storming Method. Obviously, the traditional method is not scientific enough. The model of the comparison of plane layout alternatives belongs to a kind of the complex Multiple Attribute Decision Making models. There are many Multiple Attribute Decision Making methods. In 1970s, the American operational researcher Saaty presented the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate the type of models containing both quantitative indexes and qualitative indexes, which was a very useful method, having been applied to many different fields. However, the method was seldom used in the comparison of port projects' plane layout alternatives.
