Uncertain linguistic aggregation distance measures and their application to group decision making

Abstract

We introduce a method based on distance measures for group decision making under uncertain linguistic environment. We develop some uncertain linguistic aggregation distance measures called the uncertain linguistic weighted distance (ULWD) measure, the uncertain linguistic ordered weighted distance (ULOWD) measure, and the uncertain linguistic hybrid weighted distance (ULHWD) measure. We study some of their characteristic, and we prove that the ULWD and the ULOWD are special cases of the ULHWD measure. Finally, we develop an application of the ULHWD measure in a group decision making problem concerning the evaluation of university faculty for tenure and promotion with uncertain linguistic information. © 2013 Wei Li and Shouzhen Zeng.