Trust relation, as defined in Social Network Analysis (SNA), is one of the recent notions considered in decision making. This inspired our integration of trust relation in constructing a similarity-trust network. Similarity of experts' preferences is analyzed inclusively with trust relation by defining a new combination function of both attributes. The agglomerative hierarchical clustering approach is applied to group experts into subclusters based on the constructed similaritytrust degrees. The centrality concept from SNA is then used to determine the expert's similarity-trust centrality (STC) index, which is the basis for the construction of a new aggregation operator, STC-induced ordered weighted averaging operator, to fuse the individual experts' preferences into a collective one, from which the consensus solution is derived. An analysis of results with different levels of trust degree is carried out. We show that this new idea is promising and relevant to be used in solving certain consensus group decision-making problems.
Comparing fuzzy numbers is an essential process in deducing the output of many fuzzy decision making methods. One of the comparison methods commonly used is by using similarity measure. The main advantage of the similarity measure over other approaches is its ability to minimize the loss of information in the computational process. Several similarity measures have been applied effectively in fuzzy decision making methods. In this paper, a new similarity measure based on the geometric distance, the center of gravity, Hausdorf distance and the set theoretic similarity formula known as the Dice similarity index are incorporated into the Extended Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS) method particularly in calculating the closeness coefficients. This similarity measure is in favor of others as it is able to discriminate two similar shape fuzzy numbers effectively with two different locations. A validation process is carried out by implementing the proposed procedure of the Extended FTOPSIS with the new similarity measure in solving a supplier selection problem and the ranking outcome is then compared with the Extended FTOPSIS with other existing similarity measure. The result shows that the Extended FTOPSIS with the proposed similarity measure gives a consistent result without reducing any information in the computational process.
Similarity measure between two fuzzy sets is an important tool for comparing various characteristics of the fuzzy sets. It is a preferred approach as compared to distance methods as the defuzzification process in obtaining the distance between fuzzy sets will incur loss of information. Many similarity measures have been introduced but most of them are not capable to discriminate certain type of fuzzy numbers. In this paper, an improvised similarity measure for generalized fuzzy numbers that incorporate several essential features is proposed. The features under consideration are geometric mean averaging, Hausdorff distance, distance between elements, distance between center of gravity and the Jaccard index. The new similarity measure is validated using some benchmark sample sets. The proposed similarity measure is found to be consistent with other existing methods with an advantage of able to solve some discriminant problems that other methods cannot. Analysis of the advantages of the improvised similarity measure is presented and discussed. The proposed similarity measure can be incorporated in decision making procedure with fuzzy environment for ranking purposes.
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