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

A Textual Data-Oriented Method for Doctor Selection in Online Health Communities

As doctor–patient interactive platforms, online health communities (OHCs) offer patients massive information including doctor basic information and online patient reviews. However, how to develop a systematic framework for doctor selection in OHCs according to doctor basic information and online patient reviews is a challenged issue, which will be explored in this study. For doctor basic information, we define the quantification method and aggregate them to characterize relative influence of doctors. For online patient reviews, data analysis techniques (i.e., topics extraction and sentiment analysis) are used to mine the core attributes and evaluations. Subsequently, frequency weights and position weights are respectively determined by a frequency-oriented formula and a position score-based formula, which are integrated to obtain the final importance of attributes. Probabilistic linguistic-prospect theory-multiplicative multiobjective optimization by ratio analysis (PL-PT-MULTIMOORA) is proposed to analyze patient satisfactions on doctors. Finally, selection rules are made according to doctor influence and patient satisfactions so as to choose optimal and suboptimal doctors for rational or emotional patients. The designed textual data-driven method is successfully applied to analyze doctors from Haodf.com and some suggestions are given to help patients pick out optimal and suboptimal doctors.National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 72171182 71801175 71871171 72031009Project of Service Science and Innovation Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province KL2105Project of China Scholarship Council 202107000064 202007000143Andalusian government B-TIC-590-UGR20FEDER/Junta de Andalucia-Consejeria de Transformacion Economica, Industria, Conocimiento y Universidades P20 00673 PID2019-103880RB-I00MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110001103

Multiple criteria approach applied to digital transformation in fashion stores: the case of physical retailers in Spain

This research is funded by the Spanish State Research Agency, as part of the project PID2019103880RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and by the Andalusian Government, as part of the project P20_00673.In a very open competitive context where pure online players are consistently gaining market share, the use of digital devices is a steady trend which is penetrating physical retail stores as a tool for retailers to improve customer experience and increase engagement. This need has increased with the COVID-19 pandemic as electronic devices in physical stores reduce the contact between people providing a greater sense of health safety, hence improving the customer experience. This work develops a multiple-criteria decision-making model for retailers who want to digitize their physical stores, providing a systematic approach to manage investment priorities in the organization. Important decisions should involve all different areas of the organization: Finance, Clients, Internal Processes and Learning & Growth departments. This strategic decision can be made hierarchically to obtain consistent decisions, also the use of the Order Weighted Average operator allows for alternative scenarios to be presented and agreed among the different areas of the business. The authors develop a use case for a Spanish fashion retailer. In the most widely agreed scenario the preferred devices were more technologically complex and expensive, while in the scenarios where the head of Finance is more predominant, cheaper and simpler devices were selected.Spanish Government PID2019103880RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033Andalusian Government P20_0067

Z-number-valued rule-based decision trees

As a novel architecture of a fuzzy decision tree constructed on fuzzy rules, the fuzzy rule-based decision tree (FRDT) achieved better performance in terms of both classification accuracy and the size of the resulted decision tree than other classical decision trees such as C4.5, LADtree, BFtree, SimpleCart and NBTree. The concept of Z-number extends the classical fuzzy number to model both uncertain and partial reliable information. Z-numbers have significant potential in rule-based systems due to their strong representation capability. This paper designs a Z-number-valued rulebased decision tree (ZRDT) and provides the learning algorithm. Firstly, the information gain is used to replace the fuzzy confidence in FRDT to select features in each rule. Additionally, we use the negative samples to generate the second fuzzy numbers that adjust the first fuzzy numbers and improve the model’s fit to the training data. The proposed ZRDT is compared with the FRDT with three different parameter values and two classical decision trees, PUBLIC and C4.5, and a decision tree ensemble method, AdaBoost.NC, in terms of classification effect and size of decision trees. Based on statistical tests, the proposed ZRDT has the highest classification performance with the smallest size for the produced decision tree.The project B-TIC-590-UGR20Programa Operativo FEDER 2014-2020Regional Ministry of EconomyKnowledgeEnterprise and Universities (CECEU) of AndalusiaChina Scholarship Council (CSC) (202106070037)Project PID2019-103880RB-I00MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033Andalusian government through project P20_0067

Managing Incomplete Preference Relations in Decision Making: A Review and Future Trends

In decision making, situations where all experts are able to efficiently express their preferences over all the available options are the exception rather than the rule. Indeed, the above scenario requires all experts to possess a precise or sufficient level of knowledge of the whole problem to tackle, including the ability to discriminate the degree up to which some options are better than others. These assumptions can be seen unrealistic in many decision making situations, especially those involving a large number of alternatives to choose from and/or conflicting and dynamic sources of information. Some methodologies widely adopted in these situations are to discard or to rate more negatively those experts that provide preferences with missing values. However, incomplete information is not equivalent to low quality information, and consequently these methodologies could lead to biased or even bad solutions since useful information might not being taken properly into account in the decision process. Therefore, alternative approaches to manage incomplete preference relations that estimates the missing information in decision making are desirable and possible. This paper presents and analyses methods and processes developed on this area towards the estimation of missing preferences in decision making, and highlights some areas for future research

DeSoftIn: A methodological proposal for individual software development

Different Computer Engineering undergraduate programs over the world are demanding the students to present individual works and, particularly, to present a degree project, which in most cases is related to software development. However, when planning the projects, students find themselves with the problem of choosing a method to develop the software, since existent methods involve team work, but the degree project is supposed to be done individually, in order to evaluate the student’s acquired knowledge. This difficulty leads to projects that fail either to achieve the proposed objectives or to finish on the expected time, among other difficulties. This paper presents a methodological proposal for the development of individual software projects, mainly in academia, named "DeSoftIn", which will contribute to accomplish the project objectives, and will allow the students to approach development methodologies since the beginning of their studies

A Modified Uncertainty Measure of Z-numbers

The Z-number is a more adequate construct for describing real-life information. While considering the uncertainty of the information, it also models the partial reliability of the information. It is a combination of probabilistric restriction and possibilistric restriction. In this paper, we modified the uncertainty measurement of the discrete Z-number and proposed the uncertainty measurement of the continuous Z-number. Some numerical examples are used to illustrate the calculation processes and advantages of the proposed method. An application of journey vehicle selection shows the effectiveness of the proposed uncertainty measurement in determining the weights of criteria

Managing Group Decision Making criteria values using Fuzzy Ontologies

Meeting: 8th International Conference on Information Technology and Quantitative Management (ITQM) - Developing Global Digital Economy after COVID-19Most of the available Multi-criteria Group Decision Making methods that deal with a high number of elements usually focus on managing scenarios that have high number of alternatives and/or experts. Nevertheless, there are also cases in which the number of criteria values is difficult for the experts to tackle. In this paper, a novel Group Decision Making method that employs Fuzzy Ontologies in order to deal with a high number of criteria values is presented. Our method allows the criteria values to be combined in order to generate a reduced set of criteria values that the experts can comfortably deal with. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.The authors would like to thank the Spanish State Research Agency through the project PID2019-103880RB-I00 / AEI / 10.13039/501100011033

Using clustering methods to deal with high number of alternatives on Group Decision Making

Novel Group Decision Making methods and Web 2.0 have augmented the quantity of data that experts have to discuss about. Nevertheless, experts are only capable of dealing with a reduced set of information. In this paper, a novel method for dealing with decision environments that include a large set of alternatives is presented. By the use of clustering methods, the available alternatives are combined into clusters according to their similarity. Afterwards, one Group Decision Making process is employed for choosing a cluster and another one for selecting the final alternative.The authors would like to thank the FEDER financial support for the Project TIN2016-75850-P by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities

Reaching Consensus in Digital Libraries: A Linguistic Approach

This work has been developed with the financing of FEDER funds in FUZZYLING-II Project TIN2010-17876, the Andalusian Excellence Projects TIC-05299 and TIC-5991, and Proyecto de Investigación del Plan de Promoción de la Investigación UNED 2011 (2011/PUNED/0003)2nd International Conference on Information Technology and Quantitative Management, ITQM 2014Libraries are recently changing their classical role of providing stored information into new virtual communities, which involve large number of users sharing real time information. Despite of those good features, there is still a necessity of developing tools to help users to reach decisions with a high level of consensus in those new virtual environments. In this contribution we present a new consensus reaching tool with linguistic preferences designed to minimize the main problems that this kind of organization presents (low and intermittent participation rates, difficulty of establishing trust relations and so on) while incorporating the benefits that a new digital library offers (rich and diverse knowledge due to a large number of users, real-time communication and so on). The tool incorporates some delegation and feedback mechanisms to improve the speed of the process and its convergence towards a consensual solution.FEDER funds in FUZZYLING-II Project TIN2010-17876Andalusian Excellence Projects TIC-05299 and TIC-5991Proyecto de Investigación del Plan de Promoción de la Investigación UNED 2011 (2011/PUNED/0003