Title: Exploring evidential reasoning in multicriteria decision making under uncertainty

Authors: Yuliang Fan, Peter Deer

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: In a typical Multicriteria Decision Making (MCDM) problem, we need to combine the subjective opinions of a number of experts. Existing Evidential Reasoning (ER) approaches apply the Dempster-Shafer theory (DS theory) of evidence to all levels of subattributes, with the possibility of different Frame of Discernment (FOD) and compute the expected utility values directly from the combined experts| belief distributions. We introduce a two-level Transferable Belief Model (TBM) to the reasoning process and a general interval-based DS belief structure to effect reasoning under the same FOD. Within this framework, we can combine beliefs of possible subattributes and make rational decisions based on real probability distributions.

Keywords: evidential reasoning; multicriteria decision making; MCDM; Dempster-Shafer theory; DS theory; transferable belief model; TBM; uncertainty.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2008.017268

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2008 Vol.4 No.3/4, pp.211 - 224

Published online: 22 Feb 2008 *

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