A new approach for emergency decision-making based on zero-sum game with Pythagorean fuzzy uncertain linguistic variables

Once an emergency event occurs, a reasonable and effective emergency decision should be made within a short time. The emergency decision-making (EDM) problems which are based on linguistic information have become a research focus in recent years. In this paper, to ensure more effective EDM in real-life circumstances, a novel combined approach is presented by extending the zero-sum game (ZSG) using best-worst method (BWM) and Pythagorean fuzzy uncertain linguistic variables (PFULVs). First, the weights of criteria are calculated by the BWM. Then, the payoff evaluations of decision-makers are expressed by the PFULVs, and the group payoff evaluation matrix is constructed by using the Pythagorean fuzzy uncertain linguistic prioritized weighted averaging operator. After that, the ZSG method is introduced to rank alternative emergency solutions. The new approach helps to express the vagueness of assessment data provided by decision-makers more precisely in emergency situations. Finally, a real EDM example is presented and a comparison analysis is performed to validate the feasibility and practicability of the proposed BWM-PFULV-ZSG method.