Search

Shopping center plays an important role in distribution system and marketing. These canters provide an appropriate atmosphere for customers; so that, the customers achieve the best service within a short time. However, there is an intense competition among shopping centers to attract more customers for increasing the profit. Therefore, a powerful model assists authorities in identifying the critical competitive aspects and directing their efforts toward performance improvement. However, a number of strategies have been developed to identify the most relevant components. The Delphi technique under intuitionistic fuzzy environment, called intuitionistic fuzzy Delphi method (IFDM) study, is a group-based technique that can simply formulate the uncertainty imposed by decision making circle. On the other hand, multi criteria decision making (MCDM) method such as analytical network process (ANP) is a mathematical tool for taking into account mutual relationships in order to rank a number of criteria. Nonetheless, the ANP is unable to account for the uncertainty involved in the decision-making process. Similarly, the intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) can express ambiguity and vagueness by utilizing the given scale. Because the IFS is robust in dealing with complexity and ambiguity, the IFS-GANP (an integrated model of the IFS and ANP methods under group decision) can result in a more specific description of the situation. As a result, the IFS-GANP approach outperforms both conventional ANP and fuzzy ANP. To demonstrate the model's feasibility, a case study rating the essential aspects impacting the attractiveness of retail centers is shown. The result demonstrates factor C31 (Location) with value of 0.202 plays the greatest role in attracting customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces a new multi-criteria group decision-making model in organ transplant transportation networks under uncertain situations. A new combined weighting approach is presented to obtain expert weights with various kinds of opinions by integrating similarity measure and subjective judgments of experts. Also, the CRITIC approach is given to obtain transportation criteria weights. Finally, a novel integrated ranking approach is proposed to calculate the rank of each alternative based on ideal point solution and relative preference relation (RPR) methods. This study regards an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set to cope with the vagueness of uncertain conditions in a real case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies related to transportation planning and development have been in the center of activities of many researchers in the past decades. Road congestions issues, economic problems, health problems and environmental problems are some examples of complex problems that can be caused by urban and public transportation in big cities. Evaluating urban and public transportation systems could help to reach effective solutions to overcome these issues. This article presents a short bibliographic review of some recent studies on Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approaches for evaluating urban and public transportation systems. To this aim, Scopus was chosen as the database for making a search on journal articles. Scopus is trusted by major institutions in the world, and all journals covered in this database are inspected for sufficiently high quality each year. The search was made on the journal articles from 2017 to 2022 (July). The analyses presented in this study show that the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method is the most used method, which has been applied to different studies in the field of urban and public transportation systems based on MCDM approaches. According to the analysis of the number of articles, Turkey is ranked 1st among different countries, and "Budapest University of Technology and Economics" (Hungary) is 1st in the ranking of institutions. Moreover, most of the articles have been published within the "social sciences" subject area. The recent trend in different studies on urban and public transportation systems shows the importance of using MCDM approaches in this field. Moreover, noticeable employment of fuzzy sets in several studies is a point that can shows the significant role of uncertainty in dealing with this type of problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy-makers are often hesitant to invest in unproven solutions because of a lack of the decision-making framework for managing innovations as a portfolio of investments that balances risk and return, especially in the field of developing new technologies. This study provides a new portfolio matrix for decision making of policy-makers to identify IoT applications in the agriculture sector for future investment based on two dimensions of sustainable development as a return and IoT challenge as a risk using a novel MADM approach. To this end, the identified applications of IoT in the agriculture sector fall into eight areas using the meta-synthesis method. The authors extracted a set of criteria from the literature. Later, the fuzzy Delphi method helped finalise it. The authors extended the SWARA method with interval-valued triangular fuzzy numbers (IVTFN SWARA) and used it to the weighting of the characteristics. Then, the alternatives were rated using the Additive Ratio Assessment (ARAS) method based on interval-valued triangular fuzzy numbers (IVTFN ARAS). Finally, decision-makers evaluated the results of ratings based on two dimensions of sustainability and IoT challenge by developing a framework for decision-making. Results of this paper show that policy-makers can manage IOT innovations in a disciplined way that balances risk and return by a portfolio approach, simultaneously the proposed framework can be used to determine and prioritise the areas of IoT application in the agriculture sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the advantage of a combinatory methodology presented in this study. The paper suggests that the comparison with results of previously developed methods is in high agreement. Design/methodology/approach: This paper introduces a combined compromise decision-making algorithm with the aid of some aggregation strategies. The authors have considered a distance measure, which originates from grey relational coefficient and targets to enhance the flexibility of the results. Hence, the weight of the alternatives is placed in the decision-making process with three equations. In the final stage, an aggregated multiplication rule is employed to release the ranking of the alternatives and end the decision process. Findings: The authors described a real case of choosing logistics and transportation companies in France from a supply chain project. Some comparisons such as sensitivity analysis approach and comparing to other studies and methods provided to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Originality/value: The algorithm has a unique structure among MCDM methods which is presented for the first time in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selection of appropriate subcontractors for outsourcing is very important for the success of construction projects. This can improve the overall quality of projects and promote the qualification and reputation of the main contractors. The evaluation of subcontractors can be made by some experts or decision-makers with respect to some criteria. If this process is done in different time periods, it can be defined as a dynamic multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problem. In this study, we propose a new fuzzy dynamic MCGDM approach based on the EDAS (Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution) method for subcontractor evaluation. In the procedure of the proposed approach, the sets of alternatives, criteria and decision-makers can be changed at different time periods. Also, the proposed approach gives more weight to newer decision information for aggregating the overall performance of alternatives. A numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed approach and show the application of it in subcontractor evaluation. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach is efficient and useful in real-world decision-making problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beginning of the 21st-century resulted in a more developed multi-attribute decisionmaking (MADM) tool and inspired new application areas that have resulted in discoveries in sustainable construction and building life cycle analysis. Construction and civil engineering stand for the central axis of a body consisting of a multidisciplinary (multi-dimensional) world with ties to disciplines constituting the surface, and with the disciplines, as a consequence, tied to each other. When dealing with multi-attribute decision-making problems generally multiple solutions exist, especially when there is a large number of attributes, and the concept of Pareto-optimality is inefficient. The symmetry and structural regularity are essential concepts in many natural and man-made objects and play a crucial role in the design, engineering, and development of the world. The complexity and risks inherent in projects along with different effective indicators for success and failure may contribute to the difficulties in performance evaluation. In such situations, increasing the importance of uncertainty is observed. This paper proposes a novel integrated tool to find a balance between sustainable development, environmental impact and human well-being, i.e., to find symmetry axe with respect to goals, risks, and constraints (attributes) to cope with the complicated problems. The concept of "optimal solution" as the maximum degree of implemented goals (attributes) is very important. The model is built using the most relevant variables cited in the reviewed project literature and integrates two methods: the Step-Wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method and a novel interval-valued fuzzy extension of the Additive Ratio Assessment (ARAS) method. This model was used to solve real case study of oil and gas well drilling projects evaluation. Despite the importance of oil and gas well drilling projects, there is lack of literature that describes and evaluates performance in this field projects. On the other hand, no structured assessment methodology has been presented for these types of projects. Given the limited research on performance evaluation in oil & gas well-drilling projects, the research identifies a set of performance criteria and proposes an evaluation model using fuzzy Delphi method. An illustrative example shows that the proposed method is a useful and alternative decision-making method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present a new extension of the Integrated Simple Weighted Sum-Product (WISP) method, adapted for intuitionistic numbers. The extension takes advantage of intuitionistic fuzzy sets for solving complex decision-making problems. The example of contractor selection demonstrates the use of the proposed extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asset management, as a systematic process of operating, maintaining, and upgrading physical assets, is an important element of decision-making in heavy equipment management and operation. Maintenance strategy selection plays a significant role in mining design. However, the nature of maintenance strategy selection is a complex multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem including both tangible and intangible parameters which are often in conflicting with each other. As well as when decision makers are uncertain in determining and defining the ratings and the weights of alternatives and criteria respectively, fuzzy theory provides an appropriate tool to handle the existing uncertainties. In this paper, a new fuzzy MCDM method based on the concepts of COPRAS (COmplex PRoportional ASsessment) and AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) was proposed to evaluate the feasible maintenance strategy. The linguistic terms are employed to assess the ratings and weights. Fuzzy AHP is utilized to calculate the weights of the evaluation criteria; then, the rankings of alternatives are computed based on fuzzy sets theory and COPRAS. A real world case study is presented to illustrate a potential application of the proposed model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-attribute analysis is a useful tool in many economical, managerial, constructional, etc. problems. The accuracy of performance measures in COPRAS (The multi-attribute COmplex PRoportional ASsessment of alternatives) method is usually assumed to be accurate. This method assumes direct and proportional dependence of the weight and utility degree of investigated versions on a system of attributes adequately describing the alternatives and on values and weights of the attributes. However, there is usually some uncertainty involved in all multi-attribute model inputs. The objective of this research is to demonstrate how simulation can be used to reflect fuzzy inputs, which allows more complete interpretation of model results. A case study is used to demonstrate the concept of general contractor choice of on the basis of multiple attributes of efficiency with fuzzy inputs applying COPRAS-G method. The research has concluded that the COPRAS-G method is appropriate to use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue covers symmetric and asymmetric data that occur in real-life problems. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research to present engineering and economic problem solution models that deal with symmetry or asymmetry of different data types. The Special Issue gained interest in the research community and received many submissions. After rigorous scientific evaluation by editors and reviewers, seventeen papers were accepted and published. The authors proposed different solution models, mainly covering uncertain data in multi-criteria decision-making problems as complex tools to balance the symmetry between goals, risks, and constraints to cope with the complicated problems in engineering or management. Therefore, we invite researchers interested in the topics to read the papers provided in the Special Issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue covers symmetry and asymmetry phenomena occurring in real-life problems. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research presenting engineering and economic problem solution models dealing with the symmetry or asymmetry of different types of information. The issue gained interest in the research community and received many submissions. After rigorous scientific evaluation by editors and reviewers, nine papers were accepted and published. The authors proposed different solution models as integrated tools to find a balance between the components of sustainable global development, i.e., to find a symmetry axis concerning goals, risks, and constraints to cope with the complicated problems. We hope that a summary of the Special Issue as provided in this editorial will encourage a detailed analysis of the papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determination of subjective weights, which are based on the opinions and preferences of decision-makers, is one of the most important matters in the process of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). Step-wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) is an efficient method for obtaining the subjective weights of criteria in the MCDM problems. On the other hand, decision-makers may express their opinions with a degree of uncertainty. Using the symmetric interval type-2 fuzzy sets enables us to not only capture the uncertainty of information flexibly but also to perform computations simply. In this paper, we propose an extended SWARA method with symmetric interval type-2 fuzzy sets to determine the weights of criteria based on the opinions of a group of decision-makers. The weights determined by the proposed approach involve the uncertainty of decision-makers’ preferences and the symmetric form of the weights makes them more interpretable. To show the procedure of the proposed approach, it is used to determine the importance of intellectual capital dimensions and components in a company. The results show that the proposed approach is efficient in determining the subjective weights of criteria and capturing the uncertainty of information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]