A novel decision-making approach based on three-way decisions in fuzzy information systems

The decision-making theory with three-way decisions (3WD) improves the either-or decision results of the traditional multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods and provides a more reasonable decision basis. This paper presents a novel 3WD method to solve MCDM problems in fuzzy information systems. Considering the usefulness of fuzzy neighborhood operators when dealing with fuzzy numerical data, we define a reflexive fuzzy alpha-neighborhood operator for overcoming the weaknesses of the existing fuzzy beta-neighborhood operators in some applications. A probabilistic rough fuzzy set model and MCDM-based 3WD model are established by means of the constructed fuzzy epsilon-neighborhood classes. We give a determination method of the conditional probability according to data tables of MCDM problems. Particularly, the steps and algorithm of 3WD method are proposed. Then the feasibility and validity of the method are illustrated by the validity test and the comparative analysis on an example of project investments. Finally, we demonstrate the stability of the method through the experimental analysis on different data sets. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.