UNIFORMIZATION OF MULTIGRANULAR LINGUISTIC LABELS AND THEIR APPLICATION TO GROUP DECISION MAKING

In multiple attribute group decision making （MAGDM） problems based on linguistic information, the granularities of linguistic label sets are usually different due to the differences of thinking modes and habits among decision makers. In order to deal with this inconvenience, the transformation relationships among multigranular linguistic labels （TRMLLs）, which are applied to unify linguistic labels with different granularities into a certain linguistic label set with fixed granularity, are presented in this paper. Furthermore, the reference tables are made according to TRMLLs so that the interrelated calculation will be less complicated, and the method of how to use them is explained in detail. At length, the TRMLLs are illustrated through an application example.

Interactive group decision making procedure based on uncertain multiplicative linguistic preference relations

Group decision making problems are investigated with uncertain multiplicative linguistic preference relations.An unbalanced multiplicative linguistic label set is introduced,which can be used by the experts to express their linguistic preference information over alternatives.The uncertain linguistic weighted geometric mean operator is utilized to aggregate all the individual uncertain multiplicative linguistic preference relations into a collective one,and then a simple approach is developed to determine the experts＇ weights by utilizing the consensus degrees among the individual uncertain multiplicative linguistic preference relations and the collective uncertain multiplicative linguistic preference relations.Furthermore,a practical interactive procedure for group decision making is proposed based on uncertain multiplicative linguistic preference relations,in which a possibility degree formula and a complementary matrix are used to rank the given alternatives.Finally,the proposed procedure is applied to solve the group decision making problem of a manufacturing company searching the best global supplier for one of its most critical parts used in assembling process.

QUALITATIVE REASONING BY COMPUTING WITH WORDS IN HERRERA-MARTíNEZ’S LINGUISTIC MODEL

Most of modern systems for information retrieval, fusion and management have to deal with more and more qualitative information （by linguistic labels） besides information expressed quantitatively （by numbers）, since human reports are better and easier expressed in natural language than with numbers. In this paper, Herrera-Martfnez＇s 2-Tuple linguistic representation model is extended for reasoning with uncertain and qualitative information in Dezert-Smarandache Theory （DSmT） framework, in order to overcome the limitations of current approaches, i.e., the lack of precision in the final results of linguistic information fusion according to 1-Tuple representation （ q1 ）- The linguistic information which expresses the expert＇s qualitative beliefs is expressed by means of mixed 2 Tuples （equidistant linguistic labels with a numeric biased value）. Together with the 2-Tuple representation model, some basic operators are presented to carry out the fusion operation among qualitative information sources. At last, through simple example how 2-Tuple qualitative DSmT-based （q2 DSmT） fusion rules can be used for qualitative reasoning and fusion under uncertainty, which advantage is also showed by comparing with other methods.

Combination of Qualitative Information with 2-Tuple Linguistic Representation in DSmT

Modern systems for information retrieval, fusion and management need to deal more and more with information coming from human experts usually expressed qualitatively in natural language with linguistic labels. In this paper, we propose and use two new 2-Tuple linguistic representation models （i.e., a distribution function model （DFM） and an improved Herrera-Martinez＇s model） jointly with the fusion rules developed in Dezert-Smarandache Theory （DSmT）, in order to combine efficiently qualitative information expressed in term of qualitative belief functions. The two models both preserve the precision and improve the efficiency of the fusion of linguistic information expressing the global expert＇s opinion. However, DFM is more general and efficient than the latter, especially for unbalanced linguistic labels. Some simple examples are also provided to show how the 2-Tuple qualitative fusion rules are performed and their advantages.