A Method Determining the Objective Weights of Experts Based on Evidence Similarity in Group Decision-Making

Abstract

Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence is used to quantify uncertainty in terms of the uncertain measures of belief and plausibility. It can better handle the synthesis of fuzzy and uncertain information. So it can deal with the different experts' opinions as evidence and integrate them to make decision for the decision-makers in group decision-making. But when the differences among the experts' opinions are great, the combination result is often inconsistent with the facts. This paper presents a method determining the objective weights of experts based on evidence similarity. This method determines the weights of experts' opinions according to the evidence similarity to re-adjust the basic probability assignments of the experts' evidence, which can reduce the weight of the expert whose opinions are wide divergent to others'. A study about the supplier selection problem is applied to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.