Key determinant derivations for information technology disaster recovery site selection by the multi-criterion decision making method

Disaster recovery sites are an important mechanism in continuous IT system operations. Such mechanisms can sustain IT availability and reduce business losses during natural or human-made disasters. Concerning the cost and risk aspects, the IT disaster-recovery site selection problems are multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) problems in nature. For such problems, the decision aspects include the availability of the service, recovery time requirements, service performance, and more. The importance and complexities of IT disaster recovery sites increases with advances in IT and the categories of possible disasters. The modern IT disaster recovery site selection process requires further investigation. However, very few researchers tried to study related issues during past years based on the authors' extremely limited knowledge. Thus, this paper aims to derive the aspects and criteria for evaluating and selecting a modern IT disaster recovery site. A hybrid MCDM framework consisting of the Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and the Analytic Network Process (ANP) will be proposed to construct the complex influence relations between aspects as well as criteria and further, derive weight associated with each aspect and criteria. The criteria with higher weight can be used for evaluating and selecting the most suitable IT disaster recovery sites. In the future, the proposed analytic framework can be used for evaluating and selecting a disaster recovery site for data centers by public institutes or private firms.