Decision-making strategy for slope stability using similarity measures between interval-valued fuzzy credibility sets.

In geological disasters, the slope instability of open-pit mining may result in a natural disaster. Thus, a reliable decision-making strategy of slope stability is a critical issue. In the slope stability assessment process, it is difficult for humans to usually obtain exact/certain information due to the uncertainty and vagueness/impreciseness of the measurement data and human knowledge and judgments. To enhance the credibility measure of the interval-valued fuzzy information assessment, an interval-valued fuzzy number (IVFN) should be combined with its credibility degree as a single framework for expressing the hybrid information of both. From this perspective, this study first proposes an interval-valued fuzzy credibility set/number (IVFCS/IVFCN) to express the hybrid information of IVFNs and credibility degrees. Then, we define logic relations of IVFCNs and propose a generalized distance between IVFCSs and the similarity measure and cosine and tangent similarity measures based on the generalized distance. Next, the proposed similarity measures are used for the decision-making of slope stability to assess risk grades of slope stability. Finally, the proposed DM strategy is applied to nine cases/slope samples of slope stability to illustrate its usability and effectiveness. The established strategy not only makes the decision results more reasonable and credible but also overcomes the defect of existing assessment methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]