Multicriteria analysis under uncertainty with IANUS - method and empirical results

IANUS is a method for aiding public decision-making that supports efforts towards sustainable development and has a wide range of application. IANUS stands for Integrated Assessment of Decisions uNder Uncertainty for Sustainable Development. This paper introduces the main features of IANUS and illustrates the method using the results of a case study in the Torgau region (eastern Germany). IANUS structures the decision process into four steps: scenario derivation, criteria selection, modeling, evaluation. Its overall aim is to extract the information needed for a sound, responsible decision in a clear, transparent manner. The method is designed for use in conflict situations where environmental and socioeconomic effects need to be considered and so an interdisciplinary approach is required. Special emphasis is placed on a broad perception and consideration of uncertainty. Three types of uncertainty are explicitly taken into account by IANUS: development uncertainty (uncertainty about the social, economic and other developments that affect the consequences of decision), model uncertainty (uncertainty associated with the prediction of the effects of decisions), and weight uncertainty (uncertainty about the appropriate weighting of the criteria). The backbone of IANUS is a multicriteria method with the ability to process uncertain information. In the case study the multicriteria method PROMETHEE is used. Since PROMETHEE in its basic versions is not able to process uncertain information an extension of this method is developed here and described in detail. --

A decision-making framework based on the Fermatean hesitant fuzzy distance measure and TOPSIS

A particularly useful assessment tool for evaluating uncertainty and dealing with fuzziness is the Fermatean fuzzy set (FFS), which expands the membership and non-membership degree requirements. Distance measurement has been extensively employed in several fields as an essential approach that may successfully disclose the differences between fuzzy sets. In this article, we discuss various novel distance measures in Fermatean hesitant fuzzy environments as research on distance measures for FFS is in its early stages. These new distance measures include weighted distance measures and ordered weighted distance measures. This justification serves as the foundation for the construction of the generalized Fermatean hesitation fuzzy hybrid weighted distance (DGFHFHWD) scale, as well as the discussion of its weight determination mechanism, associated attributes and special forms. Subsequently, we present a new decision-making approach based on DGFHFHWD and TOPSIS, where the weights are processed by exponential entropy and normal distribution weighting, for the multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) issue with unknown attribute weights. Finally, a numerical example of choosing a logistics transfer station and a comparative study with other approaches based on current operators and FFS distance measurements are used to demonstrate the viability and logic of the suggested method. The findings illustrate the ability of the suggested MADM technique to completely present the decision data, enhance the accuracy of decision outcomes and prevent information loss

Стратегічні пріоритети інноваційно-інвестиційного розвитку промислового сектору економіки України

The problem of determining the investment priorities of the national economy development has been actuated. It has been argued that the formation of institutional preferences for activation of industry investment processes should be carried out taking into account the potential ability of each sectoral group enterprises to increase the added value. The scientific and methodical approach for sub-sectors investment attractiveness assessment has been formed on the example of the Ukrainian food industry. It has been recommended to use for this substantiated set of relative performance indexes which are duplicated in aggregate statistical state surveys based on the enterprise’s financial statements. It has been formed the recommendations for the investment priorities of food industry development in Ukraine which are based on the appropriate calculations made by the TOPSIS and CRITIC methods. Methods of economic-statistical and comparative analysis were used for structural and dynamic characteristics of the Ukraine industrial enterprises activities. Given that innovation processes should also cover small and medium-sized industrial enterprises, whose resource opportunities are mostly limited, it is proposed to expand them within the framework of a strategic partnership. Graphic modeling methods have been used to visualize the process of building the business structures resource potential on the basis of their strategic partnership. The influence of the motivational environment on the value of organizational relations within the partnership has been formalized.Проблема визначення інвестиційних пріоритетів національної активізувався розвиток економіки. Стверджувалося, що формування інституційних преференцій для активізації галузевих інвестиційних процесів має здійснюватися з урахуванням потенційної спроможності підприємств кожної галузевої групи збільшувати додану вартість. Науково-методичний підхід до оцінки інвестиційної привабливості підгалузей сформований на прикладі української харчової промисловості. Для цього обґрунтованого набору відносних показників ефективності, які дублюються в сукупних статистичних дослідженнях стану на основі фінансової звітності підприємства, рекомендується використовувати. Були сформовані рекомендації щодо інвестиційних пріоритетів розвитку харчової промисловості в Україні, які ґрунтуються на відповідних розрахунках методами TOPSIS та CRITIC. Для структурно-динамічних характеристик діяльності промислових підприємств України були використані методи економіко-статистичного та порівняльного аналізу. Враховуючи, що інноваційні процеси мають охоплювати також малі та середні промислові підприємства, ресурсні можливості яких здебільшого обмежені, пропонується розширити їх у рамках стратегічного партнерства. Методи графічного моделювання були використані для візуалізації процесу побудови ресурсного потенціалу бізнес -структур на основі їх стратегічного партнерства. Оформлено вплив мотиваційного середовища на цінність організаційних відносин у рамках партнерства

Credit risk management of property investments through multi-criteria indicators

The economic crisis of 2008 has highlighted the ineffectiveness of the banks in their disbursement of mortgages which caused the spread of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) with underlying real estate. With the methods stated by the Basel III agreements, aimed at improving the capital requirements of banks and determining an adequate regulatory capital, the banks without the skills required have difficulties in applying the rigid weighting coefficients structures. The aim of the work is to identify a synthetic risk index through the participatory process, in order to support the restructuring debt operations to benefit smaller banks and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), by analyzing the real estate credit risk. The proposed synthetic risk index aims at overcoming the complexity of Basel III methodologies through the implementation of three different multi-criteria techniques. In particular, the integration of objective financial variables with subjective expert judgments into a participatory process is not that common in the reference literature and brings its benefits for reaching more approved and shared results in the debt restructuring operations procedure. Moreover, the main findings derived by the application to a real case study have demonstrated how important it is for the credit manager to have an adequate synthetic index that could lead to the avoidance of risky scenarios where several modalities to repair the credit debt occur

Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion. Collected Works, Volume 5

This fifth volume on Advances and Applications of DSmT for Information Fusion collects theoretical and applied contributions of researchers working in different fields of applications and in mathematics, and is available in open-access. The collected contributions of this volume have either been published or presented after disseminating the fourth volume in 2015 in international conferences, seminars, workshops and journals, or they are new. The contributions of each part of this volume are chronologically ordered. First Part of this book presents some theoretical advances on DSmT, dealing mainly with modified Proportional Conflict Redistribution Rules (PCR) of combination with degree of intersection, coarsening techniques, interval calculus for PCR thanks to set inversion via interval analysis (SIVIA), rough set classifiers, canonical decomposition of dichotomous belief functions, fast PCR fusion, fast inter-criteria analysis with PCR, and improved PCR5 and PCR6 rules preserving the (quasi-)neutrality of (quasi-)vacuous belief assignment in the fusion of sources of evidence with their Matlab codes. Because more applications of DSmT have emerged in the past years since the apparition of the fourth book of DSmT in 2015, the second part of this volume is about selected applications of DSmT mainly in building change detection, object recognition, quality of data association in tracking, perception in robotics, risk assessment for torrent protection and multi-criteria decision-making, multi-modal image fusion, coarsening techniques, recommender system, levee characterization and assessment, human heading perception, trust assessment, robotics, biometrics, failure detection, GPS systems, inter-criteria analysis, group decision, human activity recognition, storm prediction, data association for autonomous vehicles, identification of maritime vessels, fusion of support vector machines (SVM), Silx-Furtif RUST code library for information fusion including PCR rules, and network for ship classification. Finally, the third part presents interesting contributions related to belief functions in general published or presented along the years since 2015. These contributions are related with decision-making under uncertainty, belief approximations, probability transformations, new distances between belief functions, non-classical multi-criteria decision-making problems with belief functions, generalization of Bayes theorem, image processing, data association, entropy and cross-entropy measures, fuzzy evidence numbers, negator of belief mass, human activity recognition, information fusion for breast cancer therapy, imbalanced data classification, and hybrid techniques mixing deep learning with belief functions as well

A FRAMEWORK FOR STRATEGIC PROJECT ANALYSIS AND PRIORITIZATION

Projects that support the long-term strategic intent and alignment are considered strategic projects. Therefore, these projects must consider their alignment with the organization’s current strategy and focus on the risk, organizational capability, resources availability, political influence, and socio-cultural factors. Quantitative and qualitative methods prioritize the projects; however, they are usually suitable for specific industries. Although prioritization models are used in the private sector, the same in the public sector is not widely seen in the literature. The lack of models in the public sector has happened because of the projects’ social implications, the value perception of different projects in the public sector, and potentially differing value perceptions attached to the types of projects in different decision-making environments in the public sector. The thesis proposes a generic framework to develop a priority list of the available basket of projects and decide on projects for the next undertaking. The focus of the thesis is on public projects. The analysis in the framework considers the critical factors for prioritization obtained from the literature clustered through the agglomerative text clustering technique. In the proposed framework, 13 critical clusters are identified and weighted using the Criteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation (CRITIC) method to develop their ranking using the Technique for Order of Preference Similarity Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. In addition, the proposed framework uses vector weighting to prioritize projects across industries. The applicability of the framework is demonstrated through Qatar’s real estate and transportation projects. The outcome obtained from the framework is compared with those obtained through the experts using the System Usability Scale (SUS). The comparison shows that the framework provides good predictability of the projects for implementation

A Strong Sustainability Paradigm Based Analytical Hierarchy Process (SSP-AHP) Method to Evaluate Sustainable Healthcare Systems

The recent studies signify the growing concern of researchers towards monitoring and measuring sustainability performance at various levels and in many fields, including healthcare. However, there is no agreed approach to assessing the sustainability of health systems. Moreover, social indicators are less developed and less succinct. Therefore, the authors seek to map sustainable reference values in healthcare and propose a conceptual and structured framework that can guide the measurement of the social sustainability-oriented health systems. Based on a new multi-criteria method called Strong Sustainability Paradigm based Analytical Hierarchy Process, (SSP-AHP), the presented approach opens the availability for systems' comparison and benchmarking. The Strong Sustainability Paradigm incorporated into the multi-criteria evaluation method prevents the exchangeability of criteria by promoting alternatives that achieve good performance values on all criteria, implying sustainability. The research results offer insights into the core domains, sub-domains, and indicators supporting a more comprehensive assessment of the social sustainability of health systems. The framework constructed in this study consists of five major areas: equity, quality, responsiveness, financial coverage, and adaptability. The proposed set of indicators can also serve as a reference instrument, providing transparency about core aspects of performance to be measured and reported, as well as supporting policy-makers in decisions regarding sectoral strategies in healthcare. Our findings suggest that the most socially sustainable systems are Nordic countries. They offer a high level of social and financial protection, achieving very good health outcomes. On the other hand, the most unsustainable systems located in central and eastern European countries.Comment: 34 pages, 13 figures, 16 table

Assessment of the social exclusion at the regional level using multi-criteria approach: evidence from the Czech Republic

Research background: Social services are the main social tool used for the prevention and solution of social exclusion and its risk. Services of social prevention are focused on the wellbeing of the whole society and they prevent it from the influence of a wide range of socioeconomic phenomena related to social exclusion, understood in multidimensional terms. Purpose of the article: The purpose of the paper is to evaluate districts of the Czech Republic with respect to selected socio-economic factors that lead or can lead to social exclusion, when the emphasis is placed on the exclusion of children and youth, and to identify the causes of differences existing among these districts within the period of years 2011-2016. Methods: The paper focuses on multi-criterial assessment of districts of the Czech Republic using 23 indicators covering main aspects of social exclusion, which are processed with the Technique of Order Preference Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS technique) in combination with the Coefficient of Variance method used to determine the indicators' weight. The results obtained using these methods are completed by the Moran's index, Shapiro-Wilk test, Mann-Whitney test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Kendall Rank Coefficient and Levene's test. Findings & value added: A small number of districts with very negative assessment, with the presence of social exclusion and its higher risk, respectively, are identified. Differences among regions are constant and could not be assigned to randomness or disposable changes in the structure of indicators. Higher number of children born to unmarried mothers can be considered a typical aspect of the districts with higher risk of the social exclusion. The methods applied in the research, whose results and findings are presented in the paper, can be inspiring to further studies focusing on the social exclusion in its multidimensionality. The research is framed with the European Union discourse of social exclusion, thus the presented findings also open space for the comparisons and discussions of the factors associated with the social exclusion in other European Union Member States.Web of Science1611027