A systematic review on multi-criteria group decision-making methods based on weights: analysis and classification scheme

Interest in group decision-making (GDM) has been increasing prominently over the last decade. Access to global databases, sophisticated sensors which can obtain multiple inputs or complex problems requiring opinions from several experts have driven interest in data aggregation. Consequently, the field has been widely studied from several viewpoints and multiple approaches have been proposed. Nevertheless, there is a lack of general framework. Moreover, this problem is exacerbated in the case of experts’ weighting methods, one of the most widely-used techniques to deal with multiple source aggregation. This lack of general classification scheme, or a guide to assist expert knowledge, leads to ambiguity or misreading for readers, who may be overwhelmed by the large amount of unclassified information currently available. To invert this situation, a general GDM framework is presented which divides and classifies all data aggregation techniques, focusing on and expanding the classification of experts’ weighting methods in terms of analysis type by carrying out an in-depth literature review. Results are not only classified but analysed and discussed regarding multiple characteristics, such as MCDMs in which they are applied, type of data used, ideal solutions considered or when they are applied. Furthermore, general requirements supplement this analysis such as initial influence, or component division considerations. As a result, this paper provides not only a general classification scheme and a detailed analysis of experts’ weighting methods but also a road map for researchers working on GDM topics or a guide for experts who use these methods. Furthermore, six significant contributions for future research pathways are provided in the conclusions.The first author acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Universities [grant number FPU18/01471]. The second and third author wish to recognize their support from the Serra Hunter program. Finally, this work was supported by the Catalan agency AGAUR through its research group support program (2017SGR00227). This research is part of the R&D project IAQ4EDU, reference no. PID2020-117366RB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/ 501100011033.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

An overview of fuzzy multi-criteria decisionmaking methods in hospitality and tourism industries: bibliometrics, methodologies, applications and future directions

Stakeholders in hospitality and tourism industries are involved in many decision-making scenarios. Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods have been widely used in hospitality and tourism industries. Although some articles summarised the applications of MCDM models in hospitality and tourism industries, they ignored the fuzziness of individual cognition in an uncertain environment. In addition, these surveys lacked a comprehensive overview from the perspective of bibliometrics analysis and content analysis regarding the whole hospitality and tourism industries. To analyse the applications of fuzzy MCDM methods in hospitality and tourism industries and further explore future research directions, this article reviews 85 selected papers published from 1997 to 2022 regarding fuzzy MCDM models applied in hospitality and tourism industries. Through analysing the results of bibliometric analysis, methodologies and applications, we found that analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and TOPSIS methods are the most widely used MCDM methods, and tourism evaluation, hotel evaluation and selection, tourism destination evaluation and selection are the most attractive research issues in hospitality and tourism industries. Finally, future research directions are proposed from three aspects. This article provides insights for researchers and practitioners who have interest in fuzzy MCDM models in hospitality and tourism industries

A Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Multicriteria Decision-Making Method with Interactive Criteria and Its Application to Renewable Energy Projects Selection

A variety of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methods for renewable energy projects evaluation have been proposed, of which the premise of using these methods is to assume that the criteria are independent of each other. However, it may be difficult or costly to build independent criteria set in some cases because renewable energy planning is to pursue a balance of economic, social, and environmental goals, which makes the existence of interaction among criteria be of great possibility. In this paper, we consider a highly ambiguous decision situation, where the experts are allowed to give the evaluations in the form of hesitant fuzzy linguistic terms set (HFLTS). We build a hesitant fuzzy linguistic decision-making model handling the interaction among criteria from the perspective of distance measure and apply it to renewable energy projects selection. The proposed method can consider more fuzzy factors and deal with the interaction among criteria more approximately. It can reduce the decision pressure and improve the decision-making efficiency because the decision makers are allowed to express their preference in form of HFLTS and a decision criteria set of which the criteria are independent of each other is not necessary

VIKOR Technique:A Systematic Review of the State of the Art Literature on Methodologies and Applications

The main objective of this paper is to present a systematic review of the VlseKriterijuska Optimizacija I Komoromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method in several application areas such as sustainability and renewable energy. This study reviewed a total of 176 papers, published in 2004 to 2015, from 83 high-ranking journals; most of which were related to Operational Research, Management Sciences, decision making, sustainability and renewable energy and were extracted from the “Web of Science and Scopus” databases. Papers were classified into 15 main application areas. Furthermore, papers were categorized based on the nationalities of authors, dates of publications, techniques and methods, type of studies, the names of the journals and studies purposes. The results of this study indicated that more papers on VIKOR technique were published in 2013 than in any other year. In addition, 13 papers were published about sustainability and renewable energy fields. Furthermore, VIKOR and fuzzy VIKOR methods, had the first rank in use. Additionally, the Journal of Expert Systems with Applications was the most significant journal in this study, with 27 publications on the topic. Finally, Taiwan had the first rank from 22 nationalities which used VIKOR technique

A comprehensive review of hybrid game theory techniques and multi-criteria decision-making methods

More studies trend to hybrid the game theory technique with the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method to aid real-life problems. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the hybrid game theory technique and MCDM method. The fundamentals of game theory concepts and models are explained to make game theory principles clear to the readers. Moreover, the definitions and models are elaborated and classified to the static game, dynamic game, cooperative game and evolutionary game. Therefore, the hybrid game theory technique and MCDM method are reviewed and numerous applications studied from the past works of literature are highlighted. The result of the previous studies shows that the fundamental elements for both frameworks were studied in various ways with most of the past studies tend to integrate the static game with AHP and TOPSIS methods. Also, the integration of game theory techniques and MCDM methods was studied in various applications such as politics, economy, supply chain, engineering, water management problem, allocation problem and telecommunication network selection. The main contribution of the recent studies of employment between game theory technique and MCDM method are analyzed and discussed in detail which includes static and dynamic games in the non-cooperative game, cooperative game, both non-cooperative and cooperative games and evolutionary gam

Using Pythagorean Fuzzy Sets (PFS) in Multiple Criteria Group Decision Making (MCGDM) Methods for Engineering Materials Selection Applications

The process of materials’ selection is very critical during the initial stages of designing manufactured products. Inefficient decision-making outcomes in the material selection process could result in poor quality of products and unnecessary costs. In the last century, numerous materials have been developed for manufacturing mechanical components in different industries. Many of these new materials are similar in their properties and performances, thus creating great challenges for designers and engineers to make accurate selections. Our main objective in this work is to assist decision makers (DMs) within the manufacturing field to evaluate materials alternatives and to select the best alternative for specific manufacturing purposes. In this research, new hybrid fuzzy Multiple Criteria Group Decision Making (MCGDM) methods are proposed for the material selection problem. The proposed methods tackle some challenges that are associated with the material selection decision making process, such as aggregating decision makers’ (DMs) decisions appropriately and modeling uncertainty. In the proposed hybrid models, a novel aggregation approach is developed to convert DMs crisp decisions to Pythagorean fuzzy sets (PFS). This approach gives more flexibility to DMs to express their opinions than the traditional fuzzy and intuitionistic sets (IFS). Then, the proposed aggregation approach is integrated with a ranking method to solve the Pythagorean Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making (PFMCGDM) problem and rank the material alternatives. The ranking methods used in the hybrid models are the Pythagorean Fuzzy TOPSIS (The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) and Pythagorean Fuzzy COPRAS (COmplex PRoportional Assessment). TOPSIS and COPRAS are selected based on their effectiveness and practicality in dealing with the nature of material selection problems. In the aggregation approach, the Sugeno Fuzzy measure and the Shapley value are used to fairly distribute the DMs weight in the Pythagorean Fuzzy numbers. Additionally, new functions to calculate uncertainty from DMs recommendations are developed using the Takagai-Sugeno approach. The literature reveals some work on these methods, but to our knowledge, there are no published works that integrate the proposed aggregation approach with the selected MCDM ranking methods under the Pythagorean Fuzzy environment for the use in materials selection problems. Furthermore, the proposed methods might be applied, due to its novelty, to any MCDM problem in other areas. A practical validation of the proposed hybrid PFMCGDM methods is investigated through conducting a case study of material selection for high pressure turbine blades in jet engines. The main objectives of the case study were: 1) to investigate the new developed aggregation approach in converting real DMs crisp decisions into Pythagorean fuzzy numbers; 2) to test the applicability of both the hybrid PFMCGDM TOPSIS and the hybrid PFMCGDM COPRAS methods in the field of material selection. In this case study, a group of five DMs, faculty members and graduate students, from the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, were selected to participate as DMs. Their evaluations fulfilled the first objective of the case study. A computer application for material selection was developed to assist designers and engineers in real life problems. A comparative analysis was performed to compare the results of both hybrid MCGDM methods. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to show the robustness and reliability of the outcomes obtained from both methods. It is concluded that using the proposed hybrid PFMCGDM TOPSIS method is more effective and practical in the material selection process than the proposed hybrid PFMCGDM COPRAS method. Additionally, recommendations for further research are suggested

Uncertain Multi-Criteria Optimization Problems

Most real-world search and optimization problems naturally involve multiple criteria as objectives. Generally, symmetry, asymmetry, and anti-symmetry are basic characteristics of binary relationships used when modeling optimization problems. Moreover, the notion of symmetry has appeared in many articles about uncertainty theories that are employed in multi-criteria problems. Different solutions may produce trade-offs (conflicting scenarios) among different objectives. A better solution with respect to one objective may compromise other objectives. There are various factors that need to be considered to address the problems in multidisciplinary research, which is critical for the overall sustainability of human development and activity. In this regard, in recent decades, decision-making theory has been the subject of intense research activities due to its wide applications in different areas. The decision-making theory approach has become an important means to provide real-time solutions to uncertainty problems. Theories such as probability theory, fuzzy set theory, type-2 fuzzy set theory, rough set, and uncertainty theory, available in the existing literature, deal with such uncertainties. Nevertheless, the uncertain multi-criteria characteristics in such problems have not yet been explored in depth, and there is much left to be achieved in this direction. Hence, different mathematical models of real-life multi-criteria optimization problems can be developed in various uncertain frameworks with special emphasis on optimization problems

A novel method based on extended uncertain 2-tuple linguistic muirhead mean operators to MAGDM under uncertain 2-tuple linguistic environment

The present work is focused on multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) problems with the uncertain 2-tuple linguistic information (ULI2–tuple) based on new aggregation operators which can capture interrelationships of attributes by a parameter vector P. To begin with, we present some new uncertain 2-tuple linguistic MM aggregation (UL2–tuple-MM) operators to handle MAGDM problems with ULI2–tuple, including the uncertain 2-tuple linguistic Muirhead mean (UL2–tuple-MM) operator, uncertain 2-tuple linguistic weighted Muirhead mean (UL2–tuple-WMM) operator. In addition, we extend UL2–tuple-WMM operator to a new aggregation operator named extended uncertain 2-tuple linguistic weighted Muirhead mean (EUL2–tuple-WMM) operators in order to handle some decision-making problems with ULI2–tuple whose attribute values are expressed in ULI2–tuple and attribute weights are also 2-tuple linguistic information. Whilst, the some properties of these new aggregation operators are obtained and some special cases are discussed. Moreover, we propose a new method to solve the MAGDM problems with ULI2–tuple. Finally, a numerical example is given to show the validity of the proposed method and the advantages of proposed method are also analysed

A shapley trade-off ranking method for multi-criteria decision-making with defuzzification characteristic function

More studies tend to hybrid the game theory technique with the MCDM method to cater to real-situation problems. This paper provides a novel hybrid Shapley value solution concept in the cooperative game with the trade-off ranking method in MCDM. The fundamental methodology of the Shapley value solution concept and trade-off ranking method are explained to make the methodology clear to the readers. A Shapley trade-off ranking (S-TOR) method has been proposed to obtain the best solution to the fuzzy conflicting MCDM in the personnel selection problem. Thus, the triangular fuzzy number is used to represent the DMs evaluation. Then, the fuzzy number be transformed into crisp values using the defuzzification process. The future suggestions are the fuzzy system may be changed to real data for more practical problems, attempt to incorporate a comprehensive method to increase sharing-profit and decrease sharing-loss in the economy or financial problems, and other types of fuzzy numbers may be used to represent an evaluation of the DMs