Managing Interacting Criteria: Application to Environmental Evaluation Practices

The need for organizations to evaluate their environmental practices has been recently increasing. This fact has led to the development of many approaches to appraise such practices. In this paper, a novel decision model to evaluate company’s environmental practices is proposed to improve traditional evaluation process in different facets. Firstly, different reviewers’ collectives related to the company’s activity are taken into account in the process to increase company internal efficiency and external legitimacy. Secondly, following the standard ISO 14031, two general categories of environmental performance indicators, management and operational, are considered. Thirdly, since the assumption of independence among environmental indicators is rarely verified in environmental context, an aggregation operator to bear in mind the relationship among such indicators in the evaluation results is proposed. Finally, this new model integrates quantitative and qualitative information with different scales using a multi-granular linguistic model that allows to adapt diverse evaluation scales according to appraisers’ knowledge

Decision Analysis Linguistic Framework

Everyday human beings are faced with situations they should choose among different alternatives by means of reasoning and mental processes when solving a problem. Many of these decision problems are under uncertain environments including vague, imprecise and subjective information that is usually modeled by linguistic information due to the use of natural language and its relation to mental reasoning processes of the experts when expressing their judgments. In a decision process multiple criteria can be evaluated which involving multiple experts with different degrees of knowledge. Such process can be modeled by using Multi-granular Linguistic Information (MGLI) and Computing with Words (CW) processes to solve the related decision problems. Different methodologies and approaches have been proposed to accomplish this process in an accurate and interpretable way. In this paper we propose a useful Decision Analysis Framework to manage this kind of problems by using the Extended Linguistic Hierarchy (ELH), 2-tuples linguistic representation model and its computational method. The developed Framework has many advantages when dealing with a complex problem in a simple way and its capability of having easy and useful reasonably results.Sociedad Argentina de Informática e Investigación Operativ

On aggregation process in linguistic decision making framework

When solving a problem, human beings must face situations in which they should choose among different alternatives by means of reasoning and mental processes. Many of these decision problems are under uncertain environments including vague, imprecise and subjective information that is usually modeled by fuzzy linguistic approach. This approach uses linguistic information or natural language words and its relation to mental reasoning processes of the experts when expressing their assessments. In a decision process multiple criteria can be evaluated which involving multiple experts with different degrees of knowledge. Such process can be modeled by using Multi-granular Linguistic Information (MGLI) and Computing with Words (CW) processes to solve the related decision problems. Once decision makers (experts) provided their opinions, it is necessary to combine all these opinions to obtain a single overall result that can be interpreted. An aggregation operator allows accomplishing this objective calculating a global value in different ways. In this paper we study the use of aggregation operators in multi-criteria decision-making processes comparing them and obtaining conclusions about their use in our framework. Furthermore, we propose a new aggregation operator taking into account the criteria importance to evaluate the alternatives, and then an illustrative example shows its outcomes.WATCC - IV Workshop aspectos teóricos de ciencia de la computaciónRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Introducing disruption on stagnated Group Decision Making processes using Fuzzy Ontologies

In Group Decision Making processes, experts debate about how to rank a set of alternatives. It is usual that, at a certain point of the discussion, the debate gets stuck. In this paper, a novel Group Decision Making method for environments with a high number of alternatives is presented. Fuzzy Ontologies are used in order to represent the alternatives and their characteristics. Moreover, a novel stagnation analysis is used in order to determine if the debate gets stuck. If it does, the method modifies the alternatives set in order to introduce new options and remove the least popular ones. This way, the debate can revive since that the new alternatives provide different points of view. The presented method helps experts to conduct long and thorough debates in order for them to be able to make effective and reliable decisions.MCIN/AEI PID2019-103880RB-I00FEDER/Junta de Andalucia-Consejeria de Transformacion Economica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades B-TIC-590-UGR20Andalusian government P20_00673Ministry of Education and King Abdulaziz University, DSR, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia IFPHI-049-135-2020Universidad de Granada/CBU

On aggregation process in linguistic decision making framework

When solving a problem, human beings must face situations in which they should choose among different alternatives by means of reasoning and mental processes. Many of these decision problems are under uncertain environments including vague, imprecise and subjective information that is usually modeled by fuzzy linguistic approach. This approach uses linguistic information or natural language words and its relation to mental reasoning processes of the experts when expressing their assessments. In a decision process multiple criteria can be evaluated which involving multiple experts with different degrees of knowledge. Such process can be modeled by using Multi-granular Linguistic Information (MGLI) and Computing with Words (CW) processes to solve the related decision problems. Once decision makers (experts) provided their opinions, it is necessary to combine all these opinions to obtain a single overall result that can be interpreted. An aggregation operator allows accomplishing this objective calculating a global value in different ways. In this paper we study the use of aggregation operators in multi-criteria decision-making processes comparing them and obtaining conclusions about their use in our framework. Furthermore, we propose a new aggregation operator taking into account the criteria importance to evaluate the alternatives, and then an illustrative example shows its outcomes.WATCC - IV Workshop aspectos teóricos de ciencia de la computaciónRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

A multi-granular linguistic model to evaluate the suitability of installing an ERP system

The use of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) has shown clearly useful and economically profitable in most very large organizations which manage a great deal of data in their information systems. Nevertheless, the decision of installing an ERP system is not easy and it depends on the size, future profits and other features of the companies. The assessments of the parameters (features, aspects) used to evaluate the suitability of the ERP may be vague and imprecise because they are usually perceptions of the experts. We propose the use of linguistic information to assess these parameters due to the fact that it is very suitable to model and manage human perceptions. In addition, it may be that each expert has a different knowledge about each parameter and prefers to express his/her preferences in his/her own linguistic term set. Therefore, to manage the evaluation problem of installing an ERP, in this contribution we present a multi-granular linguistic evaluation model that covers these necessities

A Linguistic Recommender System For University Digital Libraries To Help Users In Their Research Resources Accesses

The Web is one of the most important information media and it is influencing in the development of other media, as for example, newspapers, journals, books, libraries, etc. Moreover, in recent days people want to communicate and collaborate. So, libraries must develop services for connecting people together in information environments. Then, the library staff needs automatic techniques to facilitate that a great number of users can access to a great number of resources. Recommender systems are tools whose objective is to evaluate and filter the great amount of information available on the Web. We present a model of a fuzzy linguistic recommender system to help University Digital Library users in their research resources accesses. This system recommends researchers specialized and complementary resources in order to discover collaboration possibilities to form multi-disciplinaryy groups. In this way, this system increases social collaboration possibilities in a university framework and contributes to improve the services provided by a University Digital Library

An Overview on Fuzzy Modelling of Complex Linguistic Preferences in Decision Making

This work is partially supported by the Spanish National research project TIN2015-66524-P, Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance Postdoctoral Training (FPDI-2013-18193) and ERDF.Decision makers involved in complex decision making problems usually provide information about their preferences by eliciting their knowledge with different assessments. Usually, the complexity of these decision problems implies uncertainty that in many occasions has been successfully modelled by means of linguistic information, mainly based on fuzzy based linguistic approaches. However, classically these approaches just allow the elicitation of simple assessments composed by either one label or a modifier with a label. Nevertheless, the necessity of more complex linguistic expressions for eliciting decision makers’ knowledge has led to some extensions of classical approaches that allow the construction of expressions and elicitation of preferences in a closer way to human beings cognitive process. This paper provides an overview of the broadest fuzzy linguistic approaches for modelling complex linguistic preferences together some challenges that future proposals should achieve to improve complex linguistic modelling in decision making.Spanish National research project TIN2015-66524-PSpanish Ministry of Economy and Finance Postdoctoral Training FPDI-2013-18193European Union (EU