Classifying volunteers participated in search and rescue activities: A comparative analysis of TOPSIS-Sort and ORESTE-Sort methods

Volunteers collaborate with professionals to provide institutional assistance in various areas; their management differs from that of professionals. To maximise volunteer productivity, categorising volunteers according to their knowledge and experience levels and distributing tasks increases volunteer retention and task efficiency. This study categorizes volunteers into four groups, fulfilling nine criteria identified through a literature review of search and rescue activities. TOPSIS-Sort and ORESTE-Sort (Optimist and Pessimist approaches) are employed in classification. Only one alternative is consistently assigned to the same class across all methods. While ORESTE-Sort offers greater flexibility and three distinct classification outcomes, it is more complex and sensitive to threshold values. TOPSIS-Sort, though simpler and producing a single classification, requires criterion weight. The Wilcoxon signed rank test is applied to evaluate the similarity between ORESTE-Sort and TOPSIS-Sort results; there are significant differences between the two methods. The study concludes by comparing the methods' applications, steps, and solution approaches, highlighting their respective advantages and disadvantages, and suggesting directions for future research.