Application of group decision-making AHP of confidence index and cloud model for rock slope stability evaluation

At present, the weights of most evaluation indexes in fuzzy analysis methods of rock slope are a fixed value. However, the influence of the evaluation indexes on slope stability actually remains uncertain and fuzzy. As a result, if only the fixed weights are employed, it will disagree with the reality. To overcome the current problem, the cloud model method was introduced in the paper. In addition, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method for group decision based on confidence indexes was proposed to construct the cloud model of weight. In the meanwhile, the evaluation indexes, grading standards, grading intervals and cloud model characteristic parameters were determined by referring to the recommended China's industry standards and the experiences of previous researchers. On this basis, an application program was developed using Python language. The application was applied in the stability evaluation of a rock slope in Donghu Town, Lianjiang County, Fujian Province, China. According to the results, the slope was generally stable, but very unstable in some local areas. The result was highly or basically consistent with the result of CSMR, FLAC, AHP-TOPSIS, FSMR, or Fuzzy-AHP method as well as the actual situation on site, confirming the effectiveness of this evaluation method.