Portuguese For Interactive Multi-criteria Decision Research Articles

Utilizing multicriteria decision‐making approach for material selection in hybrid polymer nanocomposites for energy‐harvesting applications

AbstractFlexible and cost‐effective poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF)‐based composites having excellent piezo performance are quite interesting for developing actuators, sensors, and nanogenerators. In this work, a hybrid PVDF‐based nanocomposite consisting of a fixed quantity of titanium dioxide (TiO2) and varying quantities of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) for increased mechanical and piezoelectric performance is reported for the first time. Compared to pure PVDF, there is a significant enhancement in mechanical properties for hybrid nanocomposites. The highest piezoelectric voltage as well as current values of 10.2 V and 0.78 μA are recorded for a hybrid nanocomposite containing 1 wt% of rGO for continuous finger‐tapping operation. A multicriteria decision‐making (MCDM)‐based material selection and optimization technique called TODIM is applied, and a sensitivity study is carried out to select the best material for mechanical energy harvesting applications. A hybrid nanocomposite based on PVDF‐TiO2 with 1% rGO loading is the most suitable material according to the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multicriteria Decision Making) approach.Highlights PVDF‐TiO2‐rGO nanocomposites are fabricated by solvent casting. TODIM optimization technique is applied for the best material selection among samples. Material ranking consistency shows the reliability of the TODIM method. Conductive rGO increases interfacial polarization, resulting in enhanced ε values. An increment of 88% and 104% in tensile strength and elastic modulus, respectively.

Consensus-based generalized TODIM approach for occupational health and safety risk analysis with opinion interactions

Occupational health and safety (OHS) risk analysis serves as a foundation for identifying, preventing, and controlling OHS hazards to reduce occupational accidents. As a representative risk analysis approach, Fine-Kinney has been commonly applied to control hazards. However, current Fine-Kinney studies ranked hazards without considering the consensus reaching process (CRP) with incomplete information, insufficient to tackle decision makers’ (DMs’) dissatisfaction. Besides, risk analysis mainly relies on DMs’ subjective assessments, where opinion interactions inevitably exist because of DMs’ communication during the assessment process. This paper aims to develop a hybrid generalized TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multi-criteria Decision Making) approach in the Fine-Kinney framework, integrating CRP with dynamic social influence network (SIN), and probabilistic linguistic terms (PLTSs). The PLTSs are used to cope with the complex and incomplete DMs’ opinions. The dynamic SIN is proposed to calculate the weights of DMs and describe the opinion interactions considering the psychological behaviors of DMs. Then, a new CRP is developed including a two-fold personalized feedback mechanism based on the dynamic SIN. The generalized TODIM method is introduced to rank all identified potential occupational hazards based on the collective opinions after CRP. Finally, a numerical example is conducted to verify the efficiency of the proposed approach. Comparison and sensitivity studies are also carried out to test the rationality and efficiency of the proposed approach.

A probabilistic reliable linguistic PROBID method for selecting electronic mental health platforms considering users’ bounded rationality

Reports of deteriorating mental health among citizens constitute an urgent global health alert. Electronic mental health (EMH) platforms are a great resource for mitigating mental health disorders. Extant literature on EMH has determined the attributes and indicators that reflect the feasibility, acceptability and safety of EMH platforms. However, these evaluation indicators are complex and usually conflict each other in the decision-making process. Moreover, the evaluation indicators are qualitative in nature and may be characterized by fuzziness and imprecision. Therefore, selecting an EMH platform becomes a complex cognitive process. Given the ubiquity of EMH platforms and the absence of a comprehensive decision-making model, we present a novel probabilistic reliable linguistic multi-attribute decision making (PRLMADM) model. With this model, we employ the probabilistic reliable linguistic term sets (PRLTSs) to solve decision makers’ (DMs) uncertainty and reliability of evaluation information. We construct a novel Pearson correlation measure for PRLTSs and extend it to design a weighting method known as probabilistic reliable linguistic CRiteria Importance Through Inter-criteria Correlation (PRL-CRITIC). Employing the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multicriteria Decision Making) and the PROBID (Preference Ranking on the Basis of Ideal-average Distance) techniques, we propose the probabilistic reliable linguistic (PRL) TODIM-based PROBID ranking approach, which considers the DMs’ bounded rationality. Finally, we present an illustrative example of EMH platform selection to prove the applicability of the proposed model. We demonstrate the benefits of our probabilistic reliable linguistic TODIM-based PROBID model through a series of comparisons and sensitivity analyses.

Impact of big data analytics on supply chain performance: an analysis of influencing factors

This paper aims to understand the impact of big data analytics on the retail supply chain. For doing so, we set our context to select the best big data practices amongst the available alternatives based on retail supply chain performance. We have applied TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multi-criteria Decision Making) for the selection of the best big data analytics tools among the identified nine practices (data science, neural networks, enterprise resource planning, cloud computing, machine learning, data mining, RFID, Blockchain and IoT and Business intelligence) based on seven supply chain performance criteria (supplier integration, customer integration, cost, capacity utilization, flexibility, demand management, and time and value). One of the intriguing understandings from this paper is that most of the retail firms are in a dilemma between customer loyalty and cost while implementing the big data practices in their organization. This study analyses the dominance of the big data practices at the retail supply chain level. This helps the newly emerging retail firms in evaluating the best big data practice based on the importance and dominance of supply chain performance measures.

Performance evaluation of metal-air batteries for sustainable agricultural equipment

The present work proposes to carry out a performance evaluation of metal-air batteries and hence identify the best battery that can be employed to develop sustainable agricultural equipment. However, a scientific and systematic tool is required since there are several available alternatives for metal-air batteries and numerous conflicting performance measures under which the evaluations can be made. To this end, the present work employs a versatile decision-making tool known as TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multi-criteria Decision Making) to appraise the available metal-air battery alternatives and select the best metal-air battery to aid in the development of sustainable agricultural equipment. A total of five alternatives have been appraised under the influence of the following five performance measures: Theoretical cell voltage (C1), Practical operation voltage (C2), Theoretical specific energy density (C3), Practical specific energy density (C4), and cost (C5). From the application of the TODIM methodology, it has been revealed that Li-air batteries are the best alternatives among the considered metal-air batteries that may be employed to develop sustainable agricultural equipment. Theoretical specific energy density has been attached to the highest importance while arriving at the appraisal results. The sensitivity analysis regarding the risk appetite reveals the robustness of the obtained appraisal results and the significance of the risk appetite of the experts while they make evaluations.

Key Challenges to Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has had a major impact on health, economic, social, and industrial activities. It has disrupted supply chain management and affected the movement of essential supplies to a large extent. This study aims to identify and evaluate the challenges hampering sustainable humanitarian supply chain management (SHSCM). Twenty critical challenges to SHSCM are identified using a comprehensive literature review, and three strategies were developed. The challenges and strategies were verified using expert input. The challenges were evaluated using the neutrosophic analytic hierarchical process (AHP) method. The neutrosophic TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multicriteria decision making) method was then used to select the best strategy. The findings reveal that facility location problems, short lead times for emergency supplies, spread of rumors, rapid emergence of new clusters, and doubt concerning the available remedy are five critical challenges in SHSCM during COVID-19. Public–private partnerships are identified as the best strategy in SHSCM. Finally, this paper discusses the implications to sustainable development goals in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era.

An Extended Shapley TODIM Approach Using Novel Exponential Fuzzy Divergence Measures for Multi-Criteria Service Quality in Vehicle Insurance Firms

Classification of the divergence measure for fuzzy sets (FSs) has been a successful approach since it has been utilized in several disciplines, e.g., image segmentation, pattern recognition, decision making, etc. The objective of the manuscript is to show the advantage of the combined methodology. A comparison clearly shows the usefulness of the proposed technique over the existing ones under the fuzzy environment. This study presents novel exponential-type divergence measures with some elegant features, which can be applied to FSs. Next, a TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multicriteria Decision Making) approach derived from prospect theory, Shapley function, and divergence measure for multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) is proposed. Besides, for the reason of evaluating the dominance degree of the option, and the weights of the criteria, proposed divergence measures are implemented. Evaluating and selecting the service quality is the most important issue in management; it has a direct influence on the way the manufacturer performs its tasks. Selecting the service quality can be thought of as a problem of MCDM involving numerous contradictory criteria (whether of a quantitative or qualitative nature) for the evaluation processes. In recent years, the service quality assessment is becoming increasingly complex and uncertain; as a result, some criteria assessment processes cannot be efficiently done by numerical assessments. In addition, decision experts (DEs) may not always show full rationality in different real-life situations that need decision making. Here, a real service quality evaluation problem is considered to discuss the efficacy of the developed methods. The algorithm (TODIM based on the Shapley function and divergence measures) has a unique procedure among MCDM approaches, which is demonstrated for the first time in this paper.

An innovative interval type-2 fuzzy approach for multi-scenario multi-project cash flow evaluation considering TODIM and critical chain with an application to energy sector

Project management has been proven to be an effective tool to manage sophisticated activities. Various techniques of project management have played an essential role for successful project implementation in different areas. Managing projects, especially in a multi-project environment, involves a complex situation because of its distinguishing feature in which a number of projects are being executed simultaneously, that is, they are followed in parallel. Therefore, applying human resources will be more effective and more idle time will be eliminated as well. More so, it can enable people to share their lessons learned from one project to another. With respect to handling a number of projects at the same time by most firms, it is sophisticated for contractors to cope with financial issues of projects, which involve different project cash inflows and outflows. Thus, taking an accurate cash flow prediction into account for projects has been changed into a crucial matter for firms, and lack of this consideration may result in the failure of projects as well. Moreover, there is a desperate need for uncertainties to be addressed thoroughly regarding their vital role for suitable project management. With these in mind, an innovative approach is proposed in this paper to anticipate the cash flow of project by considering type-2 fuzzy extension of both critical chain project management (CCM) for project scheduling and TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive Multi-Criteria Decision Making) method for selecting the best scenario in a multi-project environment. Hence, type-2 fuzzy numbers are utilized in order to state uncertainties. Eventually, a real-world project in a petro-refinery firm is applied to indicate the capability of the presented approach.

A novel entropy and divergence measures with multi-criteria service quality assessment using interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy TODIM method

Interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IVIFSs) are proven to be the fastest growing research area and are more flexible way to handle the uncertainty. Information measures play vital role in the study of uncertain information; therefore, number of new interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy divergence and entropy measures have been proposed in the literature and applied for different purposes. Recently, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods with IVIFSs have broadly studied by researchers and practitioners in various fields. In this paper, firstly surveys of IVIF-divergence and entropy measures are conducted and then demonstrated some counter-intuitive cases. Then, novel divergence and entropy measures are originated for IVIFSs to avoid the shortcomings of previous measures. Later on, systematic reviews of Portuguese for Interactive Multi-criteria Decision Making (TODIM) method are presented with recent fuzzy developments. Based on classical TODIM method, a new approach for MCDM is introduced under IVIF environment which considers the bounded rationality of decision makers. In the present method, the proposed entropy measure is utilized to compute the weight vector of the criteria, and the proposed divergence measure is applied in the calculation of dominance degrees. To illustrate the effectiveness of the present approach, a decision-making problem of vehicle insurance companies is presented where the evaluation values of the alternatives are given in terms of IVIF numbers. Comparison with some existing methods shows the applicability and consistency of the present method.

Extended CPT-TODIM method for interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy MAGDM and its application to urban ecological risk assessment

The urban ecological risk assessment is a new research field, which has been rising and developing with the change of environment management objectives and environment conception. The urban ecological risk assessment could be regarded as a classical multi-attribute group decision making (MAGDM) issue. The interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) can fully describe the uncertain information for the urban ecological risk assessment. Furthermore, the classical TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multi-Criteria Decision Making) is built on cumulative prospect theory (CPT), which is a selectable method in reflecting the DMs’ psychological behavior. Thus, in this paper, the TODIM method based on the CPT is proposed for MAGDM issue under IVIFS. At the same time, it is enhancing rationality to get the weight information of attributes by using the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy entropy weight method. And focusing on hot issues in contemporary society, this article applies the discussed method to urban ecological risk assessment, and demonstrates urban ecological risk assessment model based on the proposed method. Finally, through comparing the outcome of comparative analysis, we conclude that this improved approach is acceptable.

An improved reliability model for FMEA using probabilistic linguistic term sets and TODIM method

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is known to be a proactive reliability analysis model broadly utilized to recognize and evaluate potential failure modes in various industries. The normal risk priority number (RPN) method, however, has suffers from a lot of criticisms, such as requirement of precise risk estimation, lack of scientific basis in computing RPN, and neglecting the weights of risk factors. Therefore, this paper devises a new FMEA model to evaluate and prioritize the risk of failure modes by integrating probabilistic linguistic term sets and TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multi-criteria decision making) method. The probabilistic linguistic term sets are utilized to handle the intrinsic ambiguity existed in the risk assessments of FMEA team members, whilst an extended TODIM method is employed for determining the priority ranking of the individuated failure modes. Further, based on the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), an objective weighting method is presented to derive the relative weights of risk factors. Finally, two illustrative examples are implemented and comparisons with other existing methods are performed to demonstrate the rationality and superiority of our proposed FMEA model.

TODIM-based multi-criteria decision-making method with hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets

As a popular tool for modeling the qualitative assessment information, the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs) can allow the decision makes or experts to give several possible linguistic terms to rate the objects with respect to the criterion. Although there exist many multi-criteria decision-making methods put forward for handling the HFLTSs, they were developed based on the assumption that the decision makers can always provide completely rational assessments and they do not take the decision makers’ psychological behaviors into consideration. In this paper, the traditional TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multi-criteria decision making) method is extended to handle the HFLTSs based on the novel comparison function and distance measure. Firstly, we put forward a novel function for comparing two HFLTSs more effectively. After that, a novel hesitance degree function as well as some novel distance measures are given for HFLTSs. Then we apply them to extend the traditional TODIM method for solving the HFLTSs. Finally, a practical example concerning the evaluation and ranking of several satellite launching centers is provided to illustrate the validity and applicability of the proposed method.

A Heterogeneous MCDM Framework for Sustainable Supplier Evaluation and Selection Based on the IVIF-TODIM Method

The third-party platform named ECO system is used by many transnational companies to monitor the sustainability performance of their global suppliers because of its easiness and shareability. Nonetheless, methods used in this platform for evaluating and calculating the sustainability performance of the alternative suppliers are criticized for their lack of accuracy. In response to these problems, this paper presents a heterogeneous multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method based on interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy--an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multi-criteria decision making (IVIF--TODIM) to improve the efficiency of the evaluation model. Considering the varying features of evaluation criteria, i.e., either quantitative or qualitative, the evaluation values under different criteria are expressed in their appropriate information types. In this paper, a general method based on the relative closeness to the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method is applied for aggregating the heterogeneous assessment information, including crisp numbers, interval numbers, and triangular fuzzy numbers (TFNs), into interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (IVIFNs). Then, the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multi-criteria decision making) is extended and employed to prioritize the alternative suppliers. Finally, the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by a practical example of polymer manufacturing company and a comparison analysis with existing methods.

A new last aggregation method of multi-attributes group decision making based on concepts of TODIM, WASPAS and TOPSIS under interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy uncertainty

Due to the complexity of decision making under uncertainty and the existence of various and often conflicting criteria, several methods have been proposed to facilitate decision making, and fuzzy logic has been used successfully to address this issue. This paper presents a new framework for solving multi-attributes group decision-making problems under fuzzy environments. The proposed algorithm has several features. First of all, the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multi-criteria decision making) method under interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy uncertainty is employed. Moreover, objective and subjective weights for each decision maker are used to address this last aggregation approach. To consider weights of attributes, knowledge measure in addition to a new mathematical approach is introduced. A new aggregation and ranking method based on the WASPAS and TOPSIS methods, namely WT method, is presented and applied in this paper. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed framework is shown by comparing the results with two different real-world applications in the literature.

Investment risk assessment of coal-fired power plants in countries along the Belt and Road initiative based on ANP-Entropy-TODIM method

Coal is an irreplaceable part of the world energy structure and the condition will not be changed in the near future. Under the Belt and Road initiative, more and more Chinese energy enterprises are planning to invest in coal-fired power plant (CFPP) abroad. However, there are multiple potential risks in investing in CFPP overseas. So, assessing the risk level can help the investors avoid too risky countries and at the same time facilitate the government to take measures to reduce the potential risks to attract more investors. To reasonably assess overseas investment risk of CFPP in countries along the Belt and Road initiative, this paper establishes an evaluation criteria system from eight dimensions which consists of a total of 39 criteria. Then, these criteria weights are determined through a combined analytic network process-Entropy method. Furthermore, considering the psychological characteristics of decision-makers, a TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multi-criteria Decision Making) approach is used to rank the overall risk level of CFPP investment for 23 nations. The findings indicate that the criterion of economic foundation owns the largest weight. Moreover, among these evaluated nations, Singapore have the lowest risk for China’s CFPP investment, followed by New Zealand and Thailand.

Risk appetite dual hesitant fuzzy three-way decisions with TODIM

In our real life, the decision maker is always of bounded rationality under risk and uncertainty. The decision result also can be impacted by the risk appetite of the decision maker. However, the existing research works of three-way decisions rarely involve the risk appetite of the decision maker. To address this drawback and enrich the application, we introduce the risk appetite into three-way decisions. More specifically, under the dual hesitant fuzzy environment, we utilize TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multi-Criteria Decision Making) as a valuable tool to handle the risk appetite character to construct risk appetite dual hesitant fuzzy three-way decisions. This study takes into account the risk appetite of decision maker and designs a series of decision analysis methodologies for three-way decisions. It can preferably satisfy the practical situation and vastly extend the range of applications. Firstly, based on the dual hesitant fuzzy loss functions, we mainly study dual hesitant fuzzy entropy and cross-entropy measures for determining the conditional probability. In this scenario, the conditional probability information can be objectively learned from the loss function matrix with the aid of the power average (PA) aggregated operator. Then, considering the different comparison methods of dual hesitant fuzzy elements (DHFEs), we further design two types of strategies to deduce risk appetite dual hesitant fuzzy three-way decisions in the framework of TODIM, i.e., Strategies 1 and 2, which mainly rely on the pairwise comparison of loss functions with DHFEs. Strategy 1 is designed based on the score function of DHFEs. Strategy 2 is the likelihood of DHFEs. Meanwhile, some properties are carefully investigated. Finally, the project investment evaluation of online peer-to-peer (P2P) is applied to illustrate and validate these proposed strategies.

Water security evaluation based on the TODIM method with probabilistic linguistic term sets

Nowadays, water security is becoming increasingly prominent and the water security problem becomes a primary bottleneck restricting China’s future sustainable development. Water security in China is thus worth conducting an in-depth study. This paper aims to explore an effective water security evaluation method. Based on the proposed definition of water security, an evaluation index system of water security is first built from the perspective of “pressure–state–response” conceptual model. Considering the indicators’ uncertainty and the decision makers’ (DMs’) limited knowledge, the DMs usually use linguistic terms to express their judgements. As a new type of linguistic variable, probabilistic linguistic term set (PLTS) not only allows the DMs to express their judgements with multiple linguistic terms but also can reflect the DMs’ different preference degrees over these possible linguistic terms. For the water security issue under probabilistic linguistic environment, a programming model is developed to derive the attribute weights. Then, the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multi-criteria decision making) method, which considers the psychological factors of the DMs, is used to evaluate water security based on the PLTS. Furthermore, a case study is conducted and some discussions and comparative analysis are carried out according to the case results.

Efficiency evaluation of sustainable water management using the HF‐TODIM method

AbstractWith the development of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and modernization, water resources have been facing a series of increasingly severe problems in China, especially in urban areas. However, the absence of an effective, scientific evaluation method may lead to a lack of awareness of sustainable water usage. Thus, this paper focuses on performance analysis for regional sustainable water use in China. First, the sustainable water management (SWM) efficiency is defined, and then, six indicators are selected to construct an evaluation index system. Given that experts are usually not completely rational in practice, we need to take the effect of the experts’ nonrationality into consideration when evaluating the SWM efficiency. In view of the indicators’ uncertainty and fuzziness, and the experts’ nonrationality, the hesitant fuzzy TODIM (HF‐TODIM; TODIM is an acronym in Portuguese for interactive multicriteria decision making) method, which can capture the influence of the experts’ psychological factors on the evaluation results, is used to evaluate the SWM efficiency. Furthermore, the assessment method is applied to some sample regions in Tuojiang River Basin. Based on the calculated results, some findings and implications for the SWM efficiency in the sample regions are analyzed. Finally, the applied results using the proposed method are compared with the results derived using the HF‐TOPSIS (hesitant fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution in hesitant fuzzy environment) method. Through the comparative analysis, we conclude that the HF‐TOPSIS method does not take the experts’ psychological factors into consideration, but the HF‐TODIM method can avoid this issue and is very useful for the evaluation of the regional SWM efficiency.

Pythagorean fuzzy TODIM approach to multi-criteria decision making

Recently, the TODIM (an acronym in Portuguese for Interactive Multi-criteria Decision Making) approach, which can characterize the decision makers’ psychological behaviours under risk, has been introduced to handle multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems. Moreover, Pythagorean fuzzy set is an effective tool for depicting uncertainty of the MCDM problems. In this paper, based on the prospect theory, we first extend the TODIM approach to solve the MCDM problems with Pythagorean fuzzy information. Then, we conduct simulation tests to analyze how the risk attitudes of the decision makers exert the influence on the results of MCDM under uncertainty. Finally, a case study on selecting the governor of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is made to show the applicability of the proposed approach.