Assessing economic losses of haze with uncertain probabilistic linguistic analytic hierarchy process

Abstract

With the rapid development of economy and industrialization, environmental problems, especially haze pollution, are being more and more serious. When assessing the economic losses caused by haze, although the traditional quantitative method can show the amount of economic losses visually, there are also some inaccuracies in the calculation process. Based on the situation, we propose a new method called uncertain probabilistic linguistic analytic hierarchy process (UPL-AHP), which combines traditional analytic hierarchy process with uncertain probabilistic linguistic term sets to process decision information in complex problems. Firstly, we propose the concept of uncertain probabilistic linguistic comparison matrix. Then, a new approach is given to check and improve the consistency of an uncertain probabilistic linguistic comparison matrix. After that, we introduce the application of UPL-AHP in group decision making. Finally, the proposed method is used to analyze a practical case concerning the economic losses of haze. Some relevant policy recommendations are given based on the results.