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Grey Absolute Decision Analysis (GADA) Method for Multiple Criteria Group Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

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Abstract

The study proposes a novel, convenient and dimensionless model of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), hereby referred to as Grey Absolute Decision Analysis (GADA) method. The foundation of the GADA method rests upon the Absolute Grey Relational Analysis (Absolute GRA) model and the system that the method follows to produce GADA Indexes and GADA Weights. The GADA Weights represent the relative weights of decision alternatives under given criteria. The method can handle both positive (“higher the better”) and negative (“lower the better”) criteria simultaneously in its algorithm. The method can deal with problems involving uncertainty and incomplete data. Two practical cases have been presented in the study to demonstrate the feasibility of the method. Furthermore, the GADA Weights obtained for the cases show that these values are comparable to the relative weights obtained through the traditional methods like AHP and SAW thus signifying the feasibility of the method. However, the conventional methods do not consider the mutual association between the judgments of the members of decision-making group (experts’ opinions), a weakness that the proposed method overwhelms. Therefore, the overall ranking obtained from the proposed method is acceptable, especially under the uncertain environment where the nature of mutual association between the judgments is not precise. The key benefit of the method lies in its adaptability to different scales of measurement. Also, it can provide relative weights and rankings of experts, criterion and alternatives. These benefits make the GADA method significant among the class of MCDM methods.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China entitled “Research on network of reliability growth of complex equipment under the background of collaborative development” (No. 71671091). It is also supported by a joint project of both the NSFC and the Royal Society of the UK entitled “On grey dynamic scheduling model of complex product based on sensing information of internet of things” (No. 71811530338), a project of the Leverhulme Trust International Network entitled “Grey Systems and Its Applications” (No. IN-2014-020). At the same time, the authors would like to acknowledge the partial support of the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (No. NC2019003), and support of a project of Intelligence Introduction Base of the Ministry of Science and Technology (No. G20190010178). The codes related to GADA can be found at www.researchgate.net/project/Grey-Absolute-Decision-Analysis-GADA-MCDM-method.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, People’s Republic of China

    Saad Ahmed Javed

  2. Department of Construction and Real Estate, School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Amin Mahmoudi

  3. Institute for Grey Systems Studies, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 211106, People’s Republic of China

    Saad Ahmed Javed & Sifeng Liu

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  1. Saad Ahmed Javed
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Correspondence to Saad Ahmed Javed.

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Javed, S.A., Mahmoudi, A. & Liu, S. Grey Absolute Decision Analysis (GADA) Method for Multiple Criteria Group Decision-Making Under Uncertainty. Int. J. Fuzzy Syst. 22, 1073–1090 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40815-020-00827-8

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