A Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic TODIM Model and Its Application on the Behavior of Ship Water Pollutant Receiving Facility Selection

The hesitant fuzzy linguistic term sets (HFLTSs) are capable of accurately capturing decision makers' subjective characteristics, thereby resolving the issue of uncertain ambiguity in decision-making concerning existing ship water pollutant receiving facilities (SWPRF). This paper introduces an enhanced TODIM approach that incorporates optimized dominance degrees to overcome the shortcomings associated with current research assumptions regarding known weights, artificial elements, and disregard for decision makers' psychological behavior. Firstly, we introduce a new HFLTS hesitancy degree (HFLTS-HD) and bidirectional projection model to handle the problem of unknown weights. Moreover, our proposed model incorporates attribute weights, decision maker weights, and hesitant fuzzy linguistic weighted operators. Secondly, considering the inconsistency in the cardinality of elements within the hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set, we define the hesitant fuzzy linguistic signed distance (HFLSD). Eventually, using Taizhou SWPRF and its disposal facilities as a case study, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is demonstrated, while highlighting the superiority of the proposed method through a comparison with two existing approaches.

Automated summary

This study proposes an enhanced TODIM approach that solves the problem of uncertain ambiguity in decision-making by introducing hesitancy and bidirectional projection models. The approach incorporates attribute weights, decision maker weights, and hesitant fuzzy linguistic weighted operators to accurately capture decision makers' subjective characteristics.