Performance Appraisal of Select Nations in Mitigation of COVID-19 Pandemic using Entropy based TOPSIS Method

Avaliação de desempenho de nações selecionadas na mitigação de pandemia de COVID-19 usando método TOPSIS baseado em entropia

Abstract

The present study was an effort to assess the mitigation interventions carried out, so far, by the nations to fight the pandemic COVID-19. The novelty of the study was that it had considered the issue of pandemic mitigation strategy as a decision making problem. The performances of the twenty nations were to be ranked. The problem considered in the study was essentially a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) problem. The available alternatives were the 20 countries and the 8 traits were the criteria. The Technique of Order Preference Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) was used in the present study. The study used Entropy method for assignment of weights to all the criteria. The performance score obtained in respect of the countries considered in the study and the corresponding ranks indicated the relative performances of the countries in their efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that New Zealand is the best performing country and India is the worst one. Brazil ranked 17^th, while the rank of UK was 15. The performance of the USA stood at 18^th position.

Key words
Coronavirus; Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis; Positive Ideal Solution; Beneficial and Non-Beneficial Criteria; Performance Score