Multiple preferences induced aggregation with uncertainty influences in group evaluation of water resource management

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Liu, Jing^{a; b} | Zhang, ErZi^c | Ma, Chao^{a; b; *} | Yager, Ronald R.^d | Senapati, Tapan^e | Yatsalo, Boris^f | Jin, LeSheng^{g; *}

Affiliations: [a] Hubei Key Laboratory of Power System Design and Test for Electrical Vehicle, Hubei University of Arts and Science, Xiangyang, China | [b] School of Automobile and Traffic Engineering, Hubei University of Arts and Sciences, Xiangyang, China | [c] Jiangning District Water Affairs Bureau of Nanjing City, Nanjing, China | [d] Machine Intelligence Institute, Iona College, New Rochelle, NY, USA | [e] Department of Mathematics, Padima Janakalyan Banipith, Kukrakhupi, Jhargram, India | [f] Sinbad2 research group, University of Jaén, Jaén, Spain | [g] Business School, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding authors. Chao Ma, Hubei Key Laboratory of Power System Design and Test for Electrical Vehicle, Hubei University of Arts and Science, Xiangyang, China and School of Automobile and Traffic Engineering, Hubei University of Arts and Sciences, Xiangyang, China. LeSheng Jin, Business School, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China. jls1980@163.com.

Abstract: In many multi criteria group decision making problems, the individual evaluation values offered by experts are with uncertainties. Therefore, when assigning weights to those experts using preferences induced weights allocation, we can have two types of bi-polar preferences. The first one is the optimism-pessimism preference over evaluation values; the second one is the uncertainty aversion preference over the attached numerical certainty/uncertainty degrees. When performing preferences induced weights allocation, the certainty/uncertainty degrees will affect the optimism-pessimism preference induced weights allocation because the magnitudes of those evaluation values might not be the exact ones. Moreover, the importance of those experts in multi criteria group decision making can also have influence over the two types of preference induced weights allocation processes, and the importance can also be with uncertainties and can be expressed using basic uncertain information. Therefore, to handle this situation with multiple inducing variables and uncertainties, we simultaneously consider the influence of the uncertainties attached to evaluation values and the influence of uncertain importance of experts, and thus we at the same time adopt the method of confidence threshold and the method of uncertain importance level function to propose some synthesized method to adjust the induced weights allocation processes. We also propose a complete multi criteria group decision making problems to show the feasibility and reasonability of the proposed decision model for the complex situation where both evaluation values and expert importance are expressed by basic uncertain information.

Keywords: Aggregation operators, basic uncertain information, induced ordered weighted averaging operators, information fusion, multi criteria group decision making, uncertain decision making

DOI: 10.3233/JIFS-222590

Journal: Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, vol. 44, no. 5, pp. 8573-8583, 2023