PageRank vs. ANP: A Comparative Analysis for Prioritizing Maintenance Activities in Industrial Water Distribution Systems.

This paper proposes the implementation of the PageRank algorithm as an alternative to the Analytic Network Process (ANP) for prioritizing maintenance activities in water distribution systems. We demonstrate the comparable performance of the PageRank algorithm to the ANP by comparing the results obtained from a previous conference paper that utilized the ANP for decision-making in sustainability-related problems involving water distribution systems feeding manufacturing industries. The ANP is commonly used for decision-making in complex systems, but has limitations such as subjective weighting and handling large datasets. In contrast, the PageRank algorithm, originally designed for web page ranking, offers a scalable and objective approach for analyzing complex systems. To showcase the effectiveness of the PageRank algorithm, we compare the results obtained from the ANP in our previous conference paper with the PageRank algorithm. Our findings reveal that the PageRank algorithm yields identical results to the ANP, while addressing its limitations. The results of this study demonstrate the viability and effectiveness of the PageRank algorithm in achieving identical outcomes as the ANP, with potential advantages in scalability and objectivity. The proposed implementation of the PageRank algorithm as an alternative to the ANP offers a promising approach for prioritizing maintenance activities in water distribution systems, as similar considerations can be extended to any sector of activity.