scholarly journals Multi-criteria multi-stakeholder decision analysis using a fuzzy-stochastic approach for hydrosystem management

Author(s):  
Y. H. Subagadis ◽  
N. Schütze ◽  
J. Grundmann

Abstract. The conventional methods used to solve multi-criteria multi-stakeholder problems are less strongly formulated, as they normally incorporate only homogeneous information at a time and suggest aggregating objectives of different decision-makers avoiding water–society interactions. In this contribution, Multi-Criteria Group Decision Analysis (MCGDA) using a fuzzy-stochastic approach has been proposed to rank a set of alternatives in water management decisions incorporating heterogeneous information under uncertainty. The decision making framework takes hydrologically, environmentally, and socio-economically motivated conflicting objectives into consideration. The criteria related to the performance of the physical system are optimized using multi-criteria simulation-based optimization, and fuzzy linguistic quantifiers have been used to evaluate subjective criteria and to assess stakeholders' degree of optimism. The proposed methodology is applied to find effective and robust intervention strategies for the management of a coastal hydrosystem affected by saltwater intrusion due to excessive groundwater extraction for irrigated agriculture and municipal use. Preliminary results show that the MCGDA based on a fuzzy-stochastic approach gives useful support for robust decision-making and is sensitive to the decision makers' degree of optimism.

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1and2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajeev Dhingra ◽  
Preetvanti Singh

Decision problems are usually complex and involve evaluation of several conflicting criteria (parameters). Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a promising field that considers the parallel influence of all criteria and aims at helping decision makers in expressing their preferences, over a set of predefined alternatives, on the basis of criteria (parameters) that are contradictory in nature. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a useful and widespread MCDM tool for solving such type of problems, as it allows the incorporation of conflicting objectives and decision makers preferences in the decision making. The AHP utilizes the concept of pair wise comparison to find the order of criteria (parameters) and alternatives. The comparison in a pairwise manner becomes quite tedious and complex for problems having eight alternatives or more, thereby, limiting the application of AHP. This paper presents a soft hierarchical process approach based on soft set decision making which eliminates the least promising candidate alternatives and selects the optimum(potential) ones that results in the significant reduction in the number of pairwise comparisons necessary for the selection of the best alternative using AHP, giving the approach a more realistic view. A supplier selection problem is used to illustrate the proposed approach.


Axioms ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 124
Author(s):  
Dragiša Stanujkić ◽  
Darjan Karabašević ◽  
Gabrijela Popović ◽  
Predrag S. Stanimirović ◽  
Florentin Smarandache ◽  
...  

Some decision-making problems, i.e., multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) problems, require taking into account the attitudes of a large number of decision-makers and/or respondents. Therefore, an approach to the transformation of crisp ratings, collected from respondents, in grey interval numbers form based on the median of collected scores, i.e., ratings, is considered in this article. In this way, the simplicity of collecting respondents’ attitudes using crisp values, i.e., by applying some form of Likert scale, is combined with the advantages that can be achieved by using grey interval numbers. In this way, a grey extension of MCDA methods is obtained. The application of the proposed approach was considered in the example of evaluating the websites of tourism organizations by using several MCDA methods. Additionally, an analysis of the application of the proposed approach in the case of a large number of respondents, done in Python, is presented. The advantages of the proposed method, as well as its possible limitations, are summarized.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai-Rong Liang

The aim of this article is to propose a multi-objective decision-making method for researching and solving multi-attribute heterogeneous group decision-making problems. This is in the case that the characters of the decision information and decision makers' preferences are heterogeneous, and the weight information is incomplete. In this method, the multi-objective decision-making model, which considers the alternatives decision relative closeness and the preference of heterogeneous degree of decision makers in the objective function, is put forward. In addition, this article uses the minimax method to derive the multi-objective decision-making model and obtain the attribute weights and decision makers weights, and then the optimal scheme is established. Finally, an illustrative example shows the effectiveness of the proposed method.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva D. Regnier ◽  
Joel W. Feldmeier

General Eisenhower’s decisions to postpone and, one day later, to launch the “D-Day” invasion of Normandy are a gripping illustration of sequential decisions under uncertainty, suitable for any introductory decision analysis class. They’re also the archetypal example of weather-sensitive decision making using a forecast. This paper develops a framework for analyzing weather-sensitive decisions with a focus on the less-familiar strategic decisions that determine how forecasts are produced and what operational alternatives are available so that decision makers can extract value from forecasts. We tell the story of the decisions made in the months before D-Day regarding how to set up the forecasting process and the myriad decisions implicating nation-level resources that prepared Allied forces not just to invade, but to hold open that decision until the last possible hour so that Eisenhower and his staff could use the critical forecasts. Finally, we overview the current state of the weather-forecasting enterprise, the current challenges of interest to decision analysts, and what this means for decision analysts seeking opportunities to help the weather enterprise improve forecasts and to help operational decision makers extract more value from modern weather forecasts.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thais Cristina Sampaio Machado ◽  
Plácido Rogerio Pinheiro ◽  
Isabelle Tamanini

The decision making is present in every activity of the human world, either in simple day-by-day problems or in complex situations inside of an organization. Sometimes emotions and reasons become hard to separate; therefore decision support methods were created to help decision makers to make complex decisions, and Decision Support Systems (DSS) were created to aid the application of such methods. The paper presents the development of a new tool, which reproduces the procedure to apply the Verbal Decision Analysis (VDA) methodology ORCLASS. The tool, called OrclassWeb, is software that supports the process of the mentioned DSS method and the paper provides proof of concepts, that which presents its reliability with ORCLASS.


2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 1036-1060
Author(s):  
Cahyono Susetyo ◽  
Harry Timmermans ◽  
Bauke de Vries

Previous efforts to improve stakeholders’ involvement in planning and decision-making processes mostly put planners and decision makers as the ones who decide which solution is the best for the decision problems. In bottom-up planning and decision-making processes that supposedly involve stakeholders as much as possible, the most common practice is that when stakeholders have different preferences about the decision issues, supra decision makers such as planners and experts gather stakeholders’ preferences, and then, using their expertise and experience, decide what is the best choice for stakeholders. We approach the involvement of stakeholders in planning and decision-making not by relying on planners’ expertise but from a negotiation perspective. Previous works related to stakeholders’ negotiation mostly require stakeholders to engage in a face-to-face negotiation that seldom involves a computer system to improve the process. In this paper, we develop a negotiation system to support multi-issue and multi-stakeholder decision-making problems. In our approach, stakeholders do not directly interact with each other. Their proposals are submitted to a system that produces counter-proposals to reduce the differences among stakeholders’ proposals. Therefore, stakeholders do not exchange their preferences directly, but rather preference elicitations are mediated by the system. This approach is called computer-mediated negotiation. The system itself is based on the principle of an orthogonal strategy. Our computer-mediated negotiation protocol consists of two main phases. The first phase is the preference elicitation phase, which measures stakeholders’ utility functions. The second phase is the e-negotiation phase, in which stakeholders make their proposals and the computer system provides suggestions to improve them. To simulate real-world negotiations where stakeholders make proposals and counter-proposals in a series of negotiation rounds, we implemented the indifference curve approach to enable stakeholders to make incremental changes of their proposals during negotiation. The results from our experiment suggest that our method can produce an optimum solution for a multi-issue and multi-stakeholder decision problem by moving stakeholders’ proposals closer to one another.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Xiong ◽  
Xu Tan ◽  
Ke-wei Yang ◽  
Ying-wu Chen

Many decision making problems involve multiple decision makers and conflicting objectives. This paper refers to this kind of problems as group decision making for multiobjective problems (GDM-MOP). The task of GDM-MOP is to select final solution(s) from a set of nondominated solutions according to the decision makers' preferences. However, it is common that the preference could be imprecise. We study the GDM-MOP where preferences are expressed by fuzzy reference points, called as fuzzy GDMMOP (FGDM-MOP). This paper provides a decision support model to simultaneously consider two measures for FGDM-MOP: consensus measure and robustness measure. The former is used to reflect the acceptable degree of a solution by the decision making group, while the latter indicates a solution's ability to cope with any change on preferences. A multiobjective evolutionary approach is presented to solve the problem. Finally, a modified benchmark function is studied to illustrate the proposed approach.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (13) ◽  
pp. 4614
Author(s):  
João Carneiro ◽  
Diogo Martinho ◽  
Patrícia Alves ◽  
Luís Conceição ◽  
Goreti Marreiros ◽  
...  

To support Group Decision-Making processes when participants are dispersed is a complex task. The biggest challenges are related to communication limitations that impede decision-makers to take advantage of the benefits associated with face-to-face Group Decision-Making processes. Several approaches that intend to aid dispersed groups attaining decisions have been applied to Group Decision Support Systems. However, strategies to support decision-makers in reasoning, understanding the reasons behind the different recommendations, and promoting the decision quality are very limited. In this work, we propose a Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis Framework that intends to overcome those limitations through a set of functionalities that can be used to support decision-makers attaining more informed, consistent, and satisfactory decisions. These functionalities are exposed through a microservice, which is part of a Consensus-Based Group Decision Support System and is used by autonomous software agents to support decision-makers according to their specific needs/interests. We concluded that the proposed framework greatly facilitates the definition of important procedures, allowing decision-makers to take advantage of deciding as a group and to understand the reasons behind the different recommendations and proposals.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Diehlmann ◽  
Patrick Siegfried Hiemsch ◽  
Marcus Wiens ◽  
Markus Lüttenberg ◽  
Frank Schultmann

Purpose In this contribution, the purpose of this study is to extend the established social cost concept of humanitarian logistics into a preference-based bi-objective approach. The novel concept offers an efficient, robust and transparent way to consider the decision-maker’s preference. In principle, the proposed method applies to any multi-objective decision and is especially suitable for decisions with conflicting objectives and asymmetric impact. Design/methodology/approach The authors bypass the shortcomings of the traditional approach by introducing a normalized weighted sum approach. Within this approach, logistics and deprivation costs are normalized with the help of Nadir and Utopia points. The weighting factor represents the preference of a decision-maker toward emphasizing the reduction of one cost component. The authors apply the approach to a case study for hypothetical water contamination in the city of Berlin, in which authorities select distribution center (DiC) locations to supply water to beneficiaries. Findings The results of the case study highlight that the decisions generated by the approach are more consistent with the decision-makers preferences while enabling higher efficiency gains. Furthermore, it is possible to identify robust solutions, i.e. DiCs opened in each scenario. These locations can be the focal point of interest during disaster preparedness. Moreover, the introduced approach increases the transparency of the decision by highlighting the cost-deprivation trade-off, together with the Pareto-front. Practical implications For practical users, such as disaster control and civil protection authorities, this approach provides a transparent focus on the trade-off of their decision objectives. The case study highlights that it proves to be a powerful concept for multi-objective decisions in the domain of humanitarian logistics and for collaborative decision-making. Originality/value To the best of the knowledge, the present study is the first to include preferences in the cost-deprivation trade-off. Moreover, it highlights the promising option to use a weighted-sum approach to understand the decisions affected by this trade-off better and thereby, increase the transparency and quality of decision-making in disasters.


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