A Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic TODIM Method Based on a Score Function

The authors are very grateful to the editor and anonymous referees for their insightful and valuable suggestions that have led to an improved version of this paper. The work was partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71371107, 71171187), the National Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2013GM011), the Spanish National research project TIN2012-31263, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance Postdoctoral Training (FPDI-2013-18193) and ERDF.Hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs) are very useful for dealing with the situations in which the decision makers hesitate among several linguistic terms to assess an alternative. Some multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods have been developed to deal with HFLTSs. These methods are derived under the assumption that the decision maker is completely rational and do not consider the decision maker's psychological behavior. But some studies about behavioral experiments have shown that the decision maker is bounded rational in decision processes and the behavior of the decision maker plays an important role in decision analysis. In this paper, we extend the classical TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese of interactive and multi-criteria decision-making) method to solve MCDM problems dealing with HFLTSs and considering the decision maker's psychological behavior. A novel score function to compare HFLTSs more effectively is defined. This function is also used in the proposed TODIM method. Finally, a decision-making problem that concerns the evaluation and ranking of several telecommunications service providers is used to illustrate the validity and applicability of the proposed method.National Natural Science Foundation of China 71371107 71171187Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province ZR2013GM011Spanish National research project TIN2012-31263Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance Postdoctoral Training FPDI-2013-18193European Union (EU

RISK PRIORITY EVALUATION OF POWER TRANSFORMER PARTS BASED ON HYBRID FMEA FRAMEWORK UNDER HESITANT FUZZY ENVIRONMENT

The power transformer is one of the most critical facilities in the power system, and its running status directly impacts the power system's security. It is essential to research the risk priority evaluation of the power transformer parts. Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a methodology for analyzing the potential failure modes (FMs) within a system in various industrial devices. This study puts forward a hybrid FMEA framework integrating novel hesitant fuzzy aggregation tools and CRITIC (Criteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation) method. In this framework, the hesitant fuzzy sets (HFSs) are used to depict the uncertainty in risk evaluation. Then, an improved HFWA (hesitant fuzzy weighted averaging) operator is adopted to fuse risk evaluation for FMEA experts. This aggregation manner can consider different lengths of HFSs and the support degrees among the FMEA experts. Next, the novel HFWGA (hesitant fuzzy weighted geometric averaging) operator with CRITIC weights is developed to determine the risk priority of each FM. This method can satisfy the multiplicative characteristic of the RPN (risk priority number) method of the conventional FMEA model and reflect the correlations between risk indicators. Finally, a real example of the risk priority evaluation of power transformer parts is given to show the applicability and feasibility of the proposed hybrid FMEA framework. Comparison and sensitivity studies are also offered to verify the effectiveness of the improved risk assessment approach

Understanding location decisions of energy multinational enterprises within the European smart cities’ context: An integrated AHP and extended fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method

Becoming a smart city is one of the top priorities in the urban agenda of many European cities. Among the various strategies in the transition path, local governments seek to bring innovation to their cities by encouraging multinational enterprises to deploy their green energy services and products in their municipalities. Knowing how to attract these enterprises implies that political leaders understand the multi-criteria decision problem that the energy sector enterprises face when deciding whether to expand to one city or another. To this end, the purpose of this study is to design a new manageable and controllable framework oriented to European cities’ public managers, based on the assessment of criteria and sub-criteria governing the strategic location decision made by these enterprises. A decision support framework is developed based on the AHP technique combined with an extended version of the hesitant fuzzy linguistic TOPSIS method. The main results indicate the higher relative importance of government policies, such as degree of transparency or bureaucracy level, as compared to market conditions or economic aspects of the city’s host country. These results can be great assets to current European leaders, they show the feasibility of the method and open up the possibility to replicate the proposed framework to other sectors or geographical areas.The authors acknowledge the support from the European Union “Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme” under the grant agreements No 731297. Also, this research has been partially supported by the INVITE Research Project (TIN2016-80049-C2-1-R and TIN2016-80049-C2-2-R (AEI/FEDER, UE)), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Information Technology.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Multiple-Attribute Decision-Making Method Using Similarity Measures of Hesitant Linguistic Neutrosophic Numbers Regarding Least Common Multiple Cardinality

Linguistic neutrosophic numbers (LNNs) are a powerful tool for describing fuzzy information with three independent linguistic variables (LVs), which express the degrees of truth, uncertainty, and falsity, respectively. However, existing LNNs cannot depict the hesitancy of the decision-maker (DM). To solve this issue, this paper first defines a hesitant linguistic neutrosophic number (HLNN), which consists of a few LNNs regarding an evaluated object due to DMs’ hesitancy to represent their hesitant and uncertain information in the decision-making process. Then, based on the least common multiple cardinality (LCMC), we present generalized distance and similarity measures of HLNNs, and then develop a similarity measure-based multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) method to handle the MADM problem in the HLNN setting. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed approach is verified by an investment decision case

Fuzzy Techniques for Decision Making 2018

Zadeh's fuzzy set theory incorporates the impreciseness of data and evaluations, by imputting the degrees by which each object belongs to a set. Its success fostered theories that codify the subjectivity, uncertainty, imprecision, or roughness of the evaluations. Their rationale is to produce new flexible methodologies in order to model a variety of concrete decision problems more realistically. This Special Issue garners contributions addressing novel tools, techniques and methodologies for decision making (inclusive of both individual and group, single- or multi-criteria decision making) in the context of these theories. It contains 38 research articles that contribute to a variety of setups that combine fuzziness, hesitancy, roughness, covering sets, and linguistic approaches. Their ranges vary from fundamental or technical to applied approaches

Underground Mining Method Selection With the Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Gained and Lost Dominance Score Method

Underground mining method selection is a critical decision problem for available underground ore deposits in exploitation design. As many comprehensive factors, such as physical parameters, economic benefits, and environmental effects, are claimed to be established and a group of experts are involved in the issue, the underground mining method selection is deemed as a multiple experts multiple criteria decision making problem. Classical mining method assessment exists some gaps due to the way of representing opinions. To address this matter, a hesitant fuzzy linguistic gained and lost dominance score method is investigated in this paper. To enhance the flexibility and gain more information, mining planning engineers are allowed to convey their knowledge using hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets in the underground mining method selection process. A novel score function of hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set is introduced to compare any hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets. Then, based on the score function, a weight determining function is proposed to calculate the weights of criteria, which can magnify the ‘‘importance’’ and ‘‘unimportance’’ of criteria. To select the mining method, the hesitant fuzzy linguistic gained and dominance score method is developed. A case study concerning selecting a extraction method for a real mine in Yunnan province of China is presented to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method. The effectiveness of the proposed method is finally verified by comparing with other ranking methodsNational Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 71501135 and Grant 717711562019 Sichuan Planning Project of Social Science under Grant SC18A0072018 Key Project of the Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Sichuan Province under Grant Xq18A01 and Grant LYC18-02Electronic Commerce and Modern Logistics Research Center Program, Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Science, Sichuan Provincial Education Department, under Grant DSWL18-2Spark Project of Innovation, Sichuan University, under Grant 2018hhs-43Scientific Research Foundation for Excellent Young Scholars, Sichuan University, under Grant 2016SCU04A23

Distributed Linguistic Representations in Decision Making: Taxonomy, Key Elements and Applications, and Challenges in Data Science and Explainable Artificial Intelligence

Distributed linguistic representations are powerful tools for modelling the uncertainty and complexity of preference information in linguistic decision making. To provide a comprehensive perspective on the development of distributed linguistic representations in decision making, we present the taxonomy of existing distributed linguistic representations. Then, we review the key elements and applications of distributed linguistic information processing in decision making, including the distance measurement, aggregation methods, distributed linguistic preference relations, and distributed linguistic multiple attribute decision making models. Next, we provide a discussion on ongoing challenges and future research directions from the perspective of data science and explainable artificial intelligence.National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 71971039 71421001,71910107002,71771037,71874023 71871149Sichuan University sksyl201705 2018hhs-5