Pairs Of Alternatives Research Articles

Dynamic Flow Algorithm with Intermediate Storage for Emergency Evacuation Allowing Lane Reversal based on Incomplete Intuitionistic Fuzzy Preference Relation

Background Evacuation in case of disasters is of the greatest importance because of significant occurrences of natural and artificial disasters worldwide, which is why a reliable evacuation plan is always needed. However, evacuation models are difficult to develop due to various uncertain aspects that need to be considered, multiple and often conflicting criteria for evaluation and as lack of expertise regarding a specific preference of alternatives. Objective This study aims to transport the maximum number of evacuees in a dynamic network with lane reversal by a safe pattern of transportation, i.e., allowing storage at intermediate nodes. The optimal order of shelters and intermediate nodes for a reliable evacuation plan will be defined by incomplete intuitionistic fuzzy preference relation. Methods The illustrated method incorporates multiple and often conflicting criteria into a process of emergency decision-making. When evaluating evacuation alternatives, a decision-maker may hesitate and be unsure which alternative is better or not have sufficient expertise to evaluate a pair of alternatives. To model uncertainty and hesitation, intuitionistic fuzzy values are used to describe alternatives in more detail. This study relies on flow models and graph theory to simulate the movement of evacuees to safe destinations. Furthermore, fuzzy methods and their recent modifications are applied to determine the effective priority order of shelters. A case study which simulates the evacuation of aggrieved to safe destinations is presented. Results A method of evaluating the shelters and intermediate nodes for evacuation based on incomplete intuitionistic fuzzy preference relation is proposed. The method allows the missed values of experts’ assessments to be filled in regarding the evacuation alternatives and deals with intuitionistic fuzzy values, which describe experts’ hesitation. The dynamic character of flow distribution enables transit arc capacities and time factors to be processed. The contraflow technique, which is a powerful tool to decrease traffic jams and congestion on roads by reversing the movement along the unused segments, is applied to maximize the number of survivors. Conclusion The results of the method were compared to those of existing methods, and their consistency was proved. In the future, we intend to apply interval-valued intuitionistic preference relations and iterative algorithms to improve the consistency of intuitionistic preference relations to the tasks of transporting the maximum possible number of aggrieved to safe locations.

Сравнительный анализ методов «Прометей» и нечетких отношений в условиях принятия решений

The article examines the issues of researching two decision-making methods. The paper provides an algorithm for selecting various types of criteria for preference functions that give pairwise assessments of alternative values. Preference indices for all criteria are determined, and a matrix of these indices is constructed. The graph of weighted superiority is used for all alternatives based on the index matrix. Input and output flows are determined to assess the domination of alternatives. These flows ensure ranking of alternatives in complete order. Another method involves evaluating alternatives using fuzzy relations. Definitions of utility functions for given alternatives are given. Distributions of normalized assessments on an ordered scale are shown. Pairwise assessments of alternatives are considered. Decision-making for the two methods is demonstrated using the example of designing a workshop section, which is evaluated against six criteria for three alternatives. In this example, preference indices for each pair of alternatives are presented, assessments of output and input flows are provided, and a series of alternative preferences are shown. Utility functions and pairwise assessments of alternatives are presented for fuzzy relations. Assessments of the dominance share for criteria by various methods are given. The structures of criteria for methods where equivalence of values is observed and differences in the decision-making process are shown. Conclusions are drawn regarding the features that lead to discrepancies in assessments and at which stages for different methods. Recommendations are provided for using the analysis results for decision-making support. The application of the results of this research in practice will significantly enhance the efficiency of decision-making.

Analysis of third alternatives' impact on PROMETHEE II ranking

AbstractSo far, the rank reversal (RR) phenomenon has been heavily discussed in the multiple criteria analysis literature. In this work, instead of focusing on RR occurrences within PROMETHEE II, an analysis of the third alternative with respect to a given pair of alternatives is conducted. The aim is to provide a way to identify third alternatives able to cause RR between a specific pair. This opens the question of building alternatives causing RR occurrences. Such alternatives can then be used to assess the resistance a given ranking has to RR. In the end, two different approaches are used. The first considers the number of third alternatives to be added to generate RR for a given pair of alternatives. While, the second one, provides a new threshold for RR occurrences in PROMETHEE II.

A multi-criteria group decision-making method with fuzzy preference relations based on filtration-and-weighting-based triangular bounded consistency

In multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) problems with incomplete fuzzy preference relations (FPRs), the consistency based on bounded rationality is preferred to depend on the historical preferences of decision makers to generate complete FPR matrices. There are two factors in influencing the effect of historical preferences on complete FPR matrices and further decision makers’ satisfaction of group solutions. One is the effectiveness of historical preferences and the other is their relative weights. On this basis, this paper proposes a new MCGDM method with FPRs based on the filtration-and-weighting-based triangular bounded consistency (FWBTBC), where historical FPRs between three adjacent pairs of alternatives are characterized by triangles and these two factors are considered comprehensively. A triangle filtration process is designed based on the Grubbs criterion to filter the abnormal triangles in the collected ones. A weight determination process is developed, where a distance measure between remaining triangles is constructed to calculate their weights. Based on the combination of the two processes, the FWBTBC of FPRs is created and then the proposed method is presented. The validity of the proposed method is demonstrated by its application in analyzing a drainage tube supplier selection problem for a tertiary hospital located in Hefei, Anhui, China.

Clustering alternatives in preference-approvals via novel pseudometrics

Preference-approval structures combine preference rankings and approval voting for declaring opinions over a set of alternatives. In this paper, we propose a new procedure for clustering alternatives in order to reduce the complexity of the preference-approval space and provide a more accessible interpretation of data. To that end, we present a new family of pseudometrics on the set of alternatives that take into account voters’ preferences via preference-approvals. To obtain clusters, we use the Ranked k-medoids (RKM) partitioning algorithm, which takes as input the similarities between pairs of alternatives based on the proposed pseudometrics. Finally, using non-metric multidimensional scaling, clusters are represented in 2-dimensional space.

Selecting the Optimal Location for a New Facility: A PROMETHEE II Analyst

This paper presents a case study of location selection for a new facility using the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method, PROMETHEE II. The PROMETHEE II method is a widely used method for solving problems that involve multiple criteria and alternatives. The method allows for the ranking of alternatives based on their overall net flow, which is calculated by weighting and comparing the criteria values for each pair of alternatives. The case study evaluated five different locations based on criteria such as access to transportation, availability of skilled labor, and cost of living. The results of the analysis indicate that C1 was ranked as the most attractive location, with the highest scores for all criteria and the highest overall net flow among all alternatives. A sensitivity analysis was performed to ensure that the results were robust and not sensitive to small changes in the weight of the criteria. The results of this study demonstrate the utility and effectiveness of the PROMETHEE II method in practice and provide valuable insights for further research and practical action.

Voting with Preference Intensities

When an agent votes, she typically ranks the set of available alternatives. Occasionally, she may also wish to report the intensity of her preferences by indicating adjacent pairs of alternatives in her ranking between which her preference is acutely decisive; for instance, she may suggest that she likes alternative a more than b, but b much more than c. We design near-optimal voting rules which aggregate such preference rankings with intensities using the recently-popular distortion framework. We also show that traditional voting rules, which aggregate preference rankings while ignoring (or not eliciting) intensities, can incur significant welfare loss.

Eliciting men's preferences for decision-making relative to treatments of localized prostate cancer with a good or moderate prognosis.

In diseases where there is no real consensus regarding treatment modalities, promoting shared decision-making can contribute to improving safety and quality of care. This is the case in low- or intermediate-risk localized prostate cancer (PC) treatment. The aim of this study was to investigate the preferences guiding men's decisions regarding the characteristics of the treatment strategies for PC to help physicians adopt a more patient-centered approach. This prospective multicenter study used a discrete choice experiment (DCE). The attributes and the modalities were identified from a qualitative study and a literature review. Relative preferences were estimated using a logistic regression model. Interaction terms (demographic, clinical and socio-economic characteristics) were added to the model to assess heterogeneity in preferences. 652 men were enrolled in the study and completed a questionnaire with 12 pairs of hypothetical therapeutic alternatives between which they had to choose. Men's choices were significantly negatively influenced by the risk of impotence and urinary incontinence, death, and the length and frequency of care. They preferred treatments with a rescue possibility in case of deterioration or recurrence and the use of innovative technology. Surprisingly, the possibility of undergoing prostate ablation negatively influenced their choice. The results also highlighted differences in trade-offs according to socio-economic level. This study confirmed the importance of considering patients' preferences in the decision-making process. It appears essential to better understand these preferences to allow physicians to improve communication and promote case-by-case decision-making.

Opinion aggregation: Borda and Condorcet revisited

In a world admitting a fixed finite set of alternatives, an opinion is an ordered pair of alternatives. Such a pair expresses the idea that one alternative is superior to another in some sense, and an opinion aggregator assigns an aggregate relation on the set of alternatives to every possible state of opinion. Our primary motivation is to extend the standard model of social choice theory to a more general one in which no specific reference to agents generating or holding opinions is needed. Although our analysis has some bearing on those cases where opinions reflect the goodness relations of agents in a society, it is not limited to them. In addition to that interpretation, opinions can also be used to represent other forms of comparative assessments emerging from different sources. The main results of the paper provide characterizations of two essential aggregation methods that remain well-defined in our larger context. These are the Borda rule and Condorcet's majority rule formulated in terms of opinion aggregation. Moreover, we show that these two opinion aggregators agree with the plurality rule and with the approval-voting rule when opinions are generated by ballots that are specific to these two well-established voting rules.

Prometheeγ: A new Promethee based method for partial ranking based on valued coalitions of monocriterion net flow scores

AbstractMulticriteria decision aid consists of helping decision makers to compare (rank, choose, sort, etc.) different alternatives which are evaluated on conflicting criteria. In the last decades, numerous decision aid methods have been developed. Three main categories of decision aid methods are usually considered: the aggregating, interactive and outranking methods. While aggregation methods produce a complete ranking of the set of alternatives, outranking methods usually allow some pairs of alternatives to remain incomparable. This happens either if the two alternatives present some strong conflicting information or if there are not enough elements in the decision problem to state the preference or indifference between them. A well‐known family of outranking procedures are the Promethee methods. The aim of this work is first to provide an analysis of the incomparability relation produced by Promethee I. From our point of view, some shortcomings of this incomparability relation are presented. Then, a new method based on the comparison of weighted coalitions of mono‐criterion net flow score differences, called Promethee , is proposed. Promethee and Promethee i are then further compared.

Equivalent Exchange Method for Decision-Making in Case of Alternatives with Incomparable Attributes

The paper is focused on searching for novel methods aimed at improving the performance and usability of a common decision-making process where a panel of experts are assisted by specialized software systems. An equivalent exchange method (EEM) is considered in the paper as a potential candidate for a versatile method applicable in expert decision-making process for solving problems in various subject domains. The method is formally described in the paper in the form of an iterative algorithm where each iteration leads to the reduce in the number of alternatives under consideration until it converges to the preferable one. The key feature of EEM consists in the fact that the original comparison between multiple alternatives described by many attributes measured in different units is replaced by the sequence of simple exchanges between pairs of alternatives where only two attributes are engaged at once. The numerical example illustrating the full run of the algorithm is thoroughly described, so the actions performed in the steps of the algorithm are explained. The case of the successful implementation of EEM as the module of Expert Decision Support System is also presented.

期待度分析を用いたシナリオ評価法の提案

Today, experience vision and other methods that apply the structured scenario method are used to support innovative proposals. The evaluation of scenario proposals has been a challenge. This study aims to solve this problem. The starting point for this research on evaluation methods was the concept of customer satisfaction analysis. This concept is based on a time axis from the past to the present, but we thought that it could be applied to a time axis from the present to the near future. In other words, we devised a new portfolio analysis of expectations. As an example of this research, an analysis was conducted on the theme of “hydration”. As a result, a comparative analysis of four different scenario proposals was possible. Furthermore, the ranking of multiple scenario alternatives was also made possible through the numerical quantification that was devised. We also showed that this quantification can be applied to a comparative evaluation between a pair of scenario alternatives.

A PROMETHEE based outranking approach for the construction of Fangcang shelter hospital using spherical fuzzy sets

This study mainly aims to develop two effective and practical multi-criteria group decision-making approaches by taking advantage of the ground-breaking theory of PROMETHEE family of outranking methods. The presented variants of Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) method are acknowledged to address the complex decision-making problems carrying the ambiguous information, expressible in terms of yes, no, abstinence and refusal, owing to the preeminent condition and wider structure of spherical fuzzy sets. Both of the proposed approaches seek help from the Shannon’s entropy formula to evaluate the object weights of the decision criteria. The proposed techniques operate by taking into account the deviation between each pair of potential alternatives in accordance to different types of preference functions to determine the preference indices. The proposed technique of spherical fuzzy PROMETHEE I method carefully compares the positive and negative outranking flows of the alternative to get partial rankings. In contrast, the spherical fuzzy PROMETHEE II method has the edge to eliminate the incomparable pair by employing the net outranking flow to derive the final ranking. The application of proposed approaches is explained via a case study in the field of medical concerning the selection of appropriate site to establish Fangcang shelter hospital in Wuhan to treat COVID-19 patients. The convincing comparisons of the proposed methodologies with q-rung orthopair fuzzy PROMETHEE and spherical fuzzy TOPSIS methods are also included to verify the aptitude of the proposed methodology.

Agenda-Manipulation in Ranking

Abstract We study the susceptibility of committee governance (e.g. by boards of directors), modelled as the collective determination of a ranking of a set of alternatives, to manipulation of the order in which pairs of alternatives are voted on—agenda-manipulation. We exhibit an agenda strategy called insertion sort that allows a self-interested committee chair with no knowledge of how votes will be cast to do as well as if she had complete knowledge. Strategies with this “regret-freeness” property are characterized by their efficiency, and by their avoidance of two intuitive errors. What distinguishes regret-free strategies from each other is how they prioritize among alternatives; insertion sort prioritizes lexicographically.

A family of distances for preference–approvals

A preference–approval on a set of alternatives consists of a weak order on that set and, additionally, a cut-off line that separates acceptable and unacceptable alternatives. In this paper, we propose a new method for defining the distance between preference–approvals taking into account jointly the disagreements in preferences and approvals for each pair of alternatives. The proposed distance is compared to the existing distance functions to deal with clustering problems. Specifically, we prove that our metric improves the estimated clusters in terms of both stability and accuracy.

A new interactive method based on multi-criteria preference degree functions for solar power plant site selection

Solar power energy is renewable and clean energy, widely used to produce electricity. Its unique properties have led to increasing demands in many countries. In this regard, the importance of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) in solar power plants, especially site selection problems, is increasingly on the rise. Thus, this study presents a new approach suited to the nature of this problem when the amount of the required investment is a critical aspect. As managers naturally cannot rely on methods that behave as a black box, this study renders a new approach that redefines the linear relations of Interactive Simple Additive Weighting (ISAW) by multi-criteria preference degree functions of Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE). In the proposed approach, an initial order of alternatives is gradually improved by swapping the order of a pair of alternatives until the decision-maker becomes satisfied. To validate the proposed method, we consider a case study of site selection for solar farms.

Mapping Pitch Accents to Memory Representations in Spoken Discourse Among Chinese Learners of English: Effects of L2 Proficiency and Working Memory.

We examined L2 learners’ interpretation of pitch accent cues in discourse memory and how these effects vary with proficiency and working memory (WM). One hundred sixty-eight L1-Chinese participants learning L2-English listened to recorded discourses containing pairs of contrastive alternatives and then took a later recognition memory test. Their language proficiency and WM were measured through standard tests and the participants were categorized into low, medium, advanced, and high advanced language proficiency groups. We analyzed recognition memory task performance using signal detection theory to tease apart response bias (an overall tendency to affirm memory probes) from sensitivity (the ability to discern whether a specific probe statement is true). The results showed a benefit of contrastive L + H* pitch accents in rejecting probes referring to items unmentioned in a discourse, but not contrastive alternatives themselves. More proficient participants also showed more accurate memory for the discourses overall, as well as a reduced overall bias to affirm the presented statements as true. Meanwhile, that the benefit of L + H* accents in rejecting either contrast probes or unmentioned probes was modulated for people with greater working memory. Participants with higher WM were quite sure that it did not exist in the memory trace as this part of discourse wasn’t mentioned. The results support a contrast-uncertainty hypothesis, in which comprehenders recall the contrast set but fail to distinguish which is the correct item. Further, these effects were influenced by proficiency and by working memory, suggesting they reflect incomplete mapping between pitch accent and discourse representation.

Spatially correlated nested logit model for spatial location choice

Residential location choice is a key component of the models for predicting land-use and transport demand in urban planning. In general, it requires to consider correlation between spatial alternatives. The approach of nested alternatives of the nested logit model has proved highly efficient in this context. This approach incorporates into the nested logit model both spatial and non-spatial correlations due to unobserved variables. The approach of metric extensions to the spatially correlated logit model specifies models for capturing spatial correlations between alternatives without having to design a nested structure. A model combining both approaches is proposed in this research. The spatially correlated nested logit model proposed herein models the correlation between alternatives of the nests of a nested logit model using a metric of spatial correlation between pairs of alternatives. The proposed model improves the properties of the nested logit model without the need of increasing the number of unknown parameters. Our model also improves the properties of a spatially correlated model with the same spatial metric. When needing to incorporate preference heterogeneity into the model, the proposed model is compatible with a mixed specification with random coefficients. The spatially correlated nested logit model was empirically applied to the real case of residential location choice in the city of Santander in Spain. In this empirical context, this model improved the explanatory and predictive power of the models that it combines.

Robustness to rank reversal in pairwise comparison matrices based on uncertainty bounds

In the context of decision making, pairwise comparisons matrices (PCMs) based on a ratio scale are essential for deriving absolute preferences from relative comparisons. Such techniques are based on Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), which express their relative judgements on pairs of alternatives, providing pairwise comparison information, also in the case of incomplete or uncertain data, in order to obtain an absolute ranking about the alternatives. In this work, we propose a novel approach, complementary to measuring inconsistency, able to integrate and evaluate the concept of uncertainty in PCMs in order to verify the credibility of the final outcome. Such approach characterizes how SMEs’ uncertainty reflects into rank reversal. This is done via a novel optimization problem aiming to identify the smallest perturbations of the pairwise comparison values which result in an altered ranking of alternatives, e.g., reverting the ranking for at least a pair of alternatives.

Priorities in the Prevention Strategies for Medication Error Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process Method.

As medication error is inherently “preventable”, we should try to minimize errors to improve patient safety and quality of care. The aim of this study was to prioritize strategies to prevent medication errors using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. The hierarchy structure consisted of three stages: goal of the decision, decision criteria, and alternatives. Ten experts of patient safety research or clinical pharmacology compared each pair of criteria and alternatives and assigned a nine-point numerical scale. We used the eigenvector method to aggregate the pairwise comparisons obtained from experts and to estimate the weights of each criterion and alternative. Among the decision criteria, system improvement in reporting was the most preferred criterion, followed by cultural improvement and system improvement in the counterplan. The preferred alternative was a counterplan by healthcare institutions, followed by a change from a blame culture to safety culture and the building of a reporting system. A sensitivity analysis indicated that priorities were generally robust in the methods used for calculating the integrated matrices. We have suggested the priority of preventive strategies against medication errors using the AHP method. The prioritization of preventive strategies could help policymakers understand current needs and therefore develop evidence-based policies on patient safety.