Decision Making Based on Statistical Data, Signed Distance and Compositional Rule of Inference.

Abstract

An assessment of a set of alternatives under certain evaluation criteria has difficulty in dealing with the priority of these alternatives, especially with a lack of precise information in an uncertain environment. Fuzzy numbers are usually applied to represent the imprecise numerical measurements of different alternatives. In this study statistical data are used to derive level (1-α,1-β) interval-valued fuzzy numbers to represent unknown alternative effectiveness scores, after which, by using the compositional rule of inference and signed distance to transform the fuzzy decision making problem into crisp one, one can conveniently obtain the order of these different alternatives and subsequently obtain the best alternative. The approach presented is computationally efficiency, and its underlying concepts are simple and comprehensible. By using this extended generalized method, two cases of an organizational type of rapid-transit-system selection problem are presented as examples to illustrate the applicability of the interval-valued fuzzy numbers and ranking system for decision making. The key contribution of the method is the seamless integration of the statistical data, interval-valued fuzzy number and signed distance to analyze multicriteria decision making problem. The innovation introduced in the model concerns interval-valued fuzzy number which is recognized as a determinant of the effectiveness score in fuzzy relation matrix.