A web tool to support decision making in the housing market using hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets

In this paper we present a linguistic multiple-expert multi-criteria decision making model and a web tool to support it, that is centred on the housing market. The web tool is integrated with the usual catalogue of resources for rental or for sale, enriched with the possibility of ranking a subset of properties according to the client's preferences and the internal knowledge associated to the properties. Usually the description of a property is quantitative, thought in our case we add qualitative information corresponding to assessments made by housing agents. These agents are considered experts in the market conditions. We apply the 2-tuple linguistic representation model to keep accuracy in the processes of Computing with Words and the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets to qualify in situations of uncertainty and hesitation in the assessments. The software helps the agents in the process of the elicitation of the linguistic expression based on the fuzzy linguistic approach and the use of context-free grammars, and the web clients in the decision of visiting a property. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.