Title: A novel belief function reasoning approach to MCDM under uncertainty

Authors: Yuliang Fan, Anne T.A. Nguyen

Addresses: School of Information and Communication Technology, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, PMB 50, Gold Coast Mail Centre, Queensland 9726, Australia. ' School of Information and Communication Technology, Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus, PMB 50, Gold Coast Mail Centre, Queensland 9726, Australia

Abstract: This paper presents a novel belief function reasoning approach to the multiple criteria decision-making problem under uncertainty. In contrast to exist approaches, which make decisions based on the expected utility values derived directly from the combined belief function distributions, we introduce an alternative two-level reasoning transferable belief model approach to the aggregation and decision-making phases. Within this framework, the analyst can combine the beliefs regarding various sub-criteria at the credal level, and calculate the expected utility values for decision making at the pignistic level based on real probability distributions. We also propose a measure of uncertainty to capture the degrees of total uncertainty involved in different belief assessments. This measure can assist the decision maker in making rational decisions based on incomplete information.

Keywords: Dempster-Shafer; theory of belief functions; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; TBM; transferable belief model; uncertainty measures; incomplete information; rational decisions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2011.041346

International Journal of Operational Research, 2011 Vol.11 No.3, pp.316 - 330

Published online: 14 Feb 2015 *

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