Environmental impact assessment based on D numbers

•A new method for environmental impact assessment is proposed.•The proposed method is more effective by considering various types of uncertainty.•A new representation of uncertain information, called D numbers, is presented.•This paper provides a new framework for the environmental impact assessment. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a complex problem influenced by many aspects, such as environmental, social, economic, etc. Due to the involvement of human judgment, various uncertainties are introduced in the EIA process. One critical issue of EIA is the representation and handling of uncertain information. Many different theories are available to deal with uncertainty, however, deficiencies exist in these theories. In this paper, based on a more effective representation of uncertainty, called D numbers, a new method is proposed for the EIA problem. In the proposed method, the assessment results of environmental impacts are expressed and modeled by D numbers. An illustrative case is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.