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A Robust Decision-Making Method for Weighting and Ranking Risk Factors, a Case Study in Oil Engineering
Pub. online: 4 August 2026      Type: Research Article      Open accessOpen Access
Received
1 January 2026
Accepted
1 June 2026
Published
4 August 2026

Abstract

This paper firstly distinguishes between risk and Risk Factor (RF), as fundamental concepts in risk management. The need for the current study lies in the fact that although there are various risk analysis methods, but there is no well-defined frameworks for RF analysis. Manifestly, most of the researches on RF have concentrated on identifying them, expressing relationships among them, and descriptive discussion on their root causes, rather than numerically analysing them. Additionally, most of the risk-related methods (e.g. the classical Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)) are very sensitive to nuanced changes on inputs. Thus, the paper is to design a robust RF analysis method. The paper proposes a new method called Risk Influential Factor Analysis (RIFA) for evaluation of RFs. Additionally, for getting reliable results, weighting RFs is done by a novel idea named Weight Estimation by Steady Trend (WEST). The WEST is established on the basis of a well-known branch of Multiple Attribute Decision-Making (MADM), called surrogate weighting. Therewith, in analysis section, the paper shows that (I) employing the suggested hybrid RIFA-WEST methodology leads to robust results, (II) compared to the classical FMEA, the RIFA has not many drawbacks to it, and (III) the WEST is comparable with many of the existing surrogate weighting methods. The proposed methodology is applied in a case study from one of the upstream oil engineering disciplines, i.e. Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (CEOR).

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Biographies

Wang Chun
2909885@qq.com

C. Wang was born in 1981, Qingshan District, Wuhan, Hubei, China. She received her BS and MSc degree from South-Central Minzu University, China. Now, she is a faculty member of the School of Science at Wuhan Donghu University. Her research interests include computational mathematics and applications.

Shen Zhengxiang
whu-hf@whu.edu.cn

Z. Shen, born in 1987, is from Quanjiao, Anhui Province. He holds a bachelor’s degree in management from Wuhan University of Technology, a second bachelor’s degree in law from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, a master’s degree in business administration from Asia Metropolitan University, a master’s degree in legal culture from the University of Girona, and a doctorate in business administration from the University of Information Technology and Management in Rzeszow. Currently, he works at Wuhan University Asset Management and Investment Co., Ltd., mainly engaged in the transformation and industrialization of achievements. His research interests include information management, industrial intelligence, data resources, and archives management.

Hatefi Mohammad Ali
Hatefi@put.ac.ir

M.A. Hatefi is an associate professor of Oil & Gas Contracts and Management department at Petroleum University of Technology (PUT). He received his BS, MSc, and PhD degrees in industrial engineering from Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), with honour. His topics of interest include decision analysis, risk analysis, and project management. He has published several journal papers in the mentioned areas. He is currently the head of Tehran Faculty of Petroleum at the PUT.


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Copyright
© 2026 Vilnius University
Open access article under the CC BY license.

Keywords
risk management RF analysis MADM surrogate weighting robustness CEOR

Funding
This work was supported by Hubei Provincial First-Class Course “Computer Network”.

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