A new approach to dealing with interval data in the TOPSIS method.

Dealing with uncertainty is a significant direction of contemporary research on decision support systems. Despite many sophisticated methods of dealing with uncertain data, such as fuzzy sets and their numerous generalizations, methods based on interval numbers are still very popular. This is because interval data are much less complex and easier to process, and they are also easier to determine. However, there is a research gap regarding whether such a simple approach can adequately model uncertainty. This paper proposes a new approach to handling interval data in the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method based on the cartesian product of boundaries. This approach is compared with the most popular extension proposed by Jahanshahloo. In this work, two study cases taken from the literature were analyzed. Finally, the results of both approaches were compared, and conclusions were drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]