Title: A new approach based on the level of reliability of information to determine the relative weights of criteria in fuzzy TOPSIS

Authors: Alireza Sotoudeh-Anvari; Soheil Sadi-Nezhad

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract: The technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is one of the most popular approaches for multiple criteria decision making (MCDM). The main limitation of the traditional TOPSIS lies in the inability to handle the ambiguity in the decision making process. Several researchers have introduced various fuzzy TOPSIS models. However, there is the key shortcoming in all previous approaches. When dealing with real information, fuzziness is not adequate and a degree of reliability of the information is very critical. In view of this, Prof. Zadeh introduced a Z-number for a more efficient explanation of real-life information. Compared with the usual fuzzy number, Z-number has extra capacity to depict the imperfect information. In this paper, Z-numbers is applied to express the relative weights of criteria and the fuzzy TOPSIS is used to rank the alternatives. The basic benefit of the proposed method is its low computational intricacy.

Keywords: Z-numbers; fuzzy sets; fuzzy TOPSIS; linguistic variables; information reliability; relative weights; criteria; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; ambiguity; imperfect information.

DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2015.069603

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, 2015 Vol.8 No.2, pp.164 - 178

Received: 17 Oct 2014
Accepted: 06 Jan 2015
Published online: 28 May 2015 *

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