Light-Weighted Decision Support Framework for Selecting Cloud Service Providers

Multi-criteria decision making(MCDM)is a technique used to achieve better outcomes for some complex business-related problems,whereby the selection of the best alternative can be made in as many cases as possible.This paper proposes a model,the multi-criteria decision support method,that allows both service providers and consumers to maximize their profits while preserving the best matching process for resource allocation and task scheduling.The increasing number of service providers with different service provision capabilities creates an issue for consumers seeking to select the best service provider.Each consumer seeks a service provider based on various preferences,such as price,service quality,and time to complete the tasks.In the literature,the problem is viewed from different perspectives,such as investigating how to enhance task scheduling and the resource allocation process,improve consumers’trust,and deal with network problems.This paper offers a novel model that considers the preferences of both service providers and consumers to find the best available service provider for each consumer.First,the model adopts the best-worst method(BWM)to gather and prioritize tasks based on consumers’and service providers’preferences.Then,the model calculates and matches similarities between the sets of tasks from the consumer’s side with the sets of tasks from the provider’s side to select the best service provider for each consumer using the two proposed algorithms.The complexity of the two algorithms is found to be O(n3).

Fuzzy based decision support method for selection of sustainable wastewater treatment technologies

Inadequate decision support tools have led to selection of inappropriate wastewater treatment technologies.The objectives of this research were to investigate performance data for wastewater treatment technologies,develop a Decision Support Method(DSM)for evaluating performance of technologies,and to validate the developed method.The method was developed through evaluation of performance of wastewater treatment technologies against environmental and economic indicators.Fuzzy logic techniques in form of linguistic variables were applied in order to support decision making under uncertainty.The DSM relied on performance evaluation in order to rate effectiveness of wastewater treatment technologies.DSM was validated through a training tool in ED-WAVE,a model developed by a consortium of European and Asian countries.The reliance of the DSM on performance evaluation was an improvement on the existing decision support tools such as ED-WAVE that relied on retrieval of past performance data.As DSM integrated environmental and economic factors in evaluating wastewater treatment technologies,it was thus able to select a process that was not only environmentally sustainable but also economically affordable.