comparing the environmental impact assessment methods using analytical taxonomic analysis

further to emerging the environmental protection thoughts in the 1970's, most of the governments in the developed countries have been faced with social pressures for taking actions in order to stop the degradation in the environment and the quality of life. in response to such a societal desire, those governments have approved the requirement of environmental impact statement for the projects. in order to meet the need in the methods and tools for conducting the environmental impact assessment, a majority of the efforts has been focusing on developing appropriate methods and tools for the environmental impact assessment. however, these methods and tools have its own advantages and disadvantages so that choosing the most relevant methods and tools are of the most challenging task of the environmental assessment expertise team. in order to determine the degree of prioritization of the available methods and tools, the present study has applied the numerical taxonomic analysis as one of the multi-attribute decision making methods. the results have revealed that the weighted checklist and matrix methods, out of twelve methods had the highest priority in order to apply for conducting the environmental impact assessment.