The Deck of Cards Method to Build Interpretable Fuzzy Sets in Decision-making

Abstract

This paper deals with the construction of interpretable fuzzy sets by following a socio-technical-based approach, where two key actors, the (decision) analyst, and the decision-maker, interact in a co-constructive way for building a membership function that accurately represents the decision-maker’s individualized semantics, even when considering heterogeneous scales. In the proposed approach, the membership function is not provided directly but rather built from the (social) interaction of these two actors, where the technicalities of the methods are presented to the decision-maker by the analyst in a very simple way. This means that the decision-maker’s preferences will be constructed through a process in order to she/he will get more knowledge about her/his own problem. The interpretability of each membership function is now a fundamental aspect of the way the decision-maker was involved in the process. Since technical aspects are based on the Deck of Cards Method, a well-known tool for assessing the parameters of multiple criteria decision-making problems, the obtained membership functions will receive the name of DoC-MFs, from Deck of Cards-based Membership Functions. This paper also presents examples and a case study in the field of sustainability to show the applicability of the proposed methodology.