Methods for aggregating intuitionistic uncertain linguistic variables and their application to group decision making

With respect to multiple attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problems in which the attribute weights and the expert weights take the form of real numbers and the attribute values take the form of intuitionistic uncertain linguistic variables, new group decision making methods have been developed. First, operational laws, expected value definitions, score functions and accuracy functions of intuitionistic uncertain linguistic variables are introduced. Then, an intuitionistic uncertain linguistic weighted geometric average (IULWGA) operator and an intuitionistic uncertain linguistic ordered weighted geometric (IULOWG) operator are developed. Furthermore, some desirable properties of these operators, such as commutativity, idempotency, monotonicity and boundedness, have been studied, and an intuitionistic uncertain linguistic hybrid geometric (IULHG) operator, which generalizes both the IULWGA operator and the IULOWG operator, was developed. Based on these operators, two methods for multiple attribute group decision making problems with intuitionistic uncertain linguistic information have been proposed. Finally, an illustrative example is given to verify the developed approaches and demonstrate their practicality and effectiveness. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.