TY - JOUR
T1 - A Case Study of Group Decision Method for Environmental Foresight and Water Resources Planning Using a Fuzzy Approach
AU - Halabi, Ana X.
AU - Montoya-Torres, Jairo R.
AU - Obregón, Nelson
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments Authors wish to thank Sergio A. Piñeros for valuable comments and data contribution. Part of this work was performed under Grants Colciencias-SENA 120-2008, from the Colombian Department of Science and Technology, and ING-91-2009 and ING-115-2010 from Universidad de La Sabana. Authors also wish to acknowledge the anonymous referees for their insights, comments and suggestions that allowed the improvement of this paper.
PY - 2012/3
Y1 - 2012/3
N2 - Group decision-making (i. e., multi-expert) is an important subject in planning water resources. The inherent complexity and uncertainty of real world urge many experts to be involved in decision-making processes. This paper presents an application of the linguistic-label aggregation method in a real-life case study. The case was taken from a foresight exercise in Colombia (South America) concerning environmental and water resources planning in a river basin. The group decision-making problem is solved using a four-step approach based on (i) the evaluation of experts' opinions, (ii) the aggregation of opinions for each alternative, (iii) fuzzy ranking, and (iv) final assessment. Two main issues that are new in our work is that we consider temporal linguistic labels and a fuzzy ranking procedure that is able to include the mean, the standard deviation, the fuzzy membership function and the frequency of experts' opinions for each alternative. The approach is developed and implemented on a computational tool. Results show an efficient decision-making process, that is, the tool demonstrated to deal with shortest time frames and to increase the efficiency of the planning resources, mainly because allows the decision manager to focus on the establishment of criteria. The latter also leads to objectivity and eases the identification and discussion of elements of consensus in decisions that otherwise may be embedded in individuals' interests.
AB - Group decision-making (i. e., multi-expert) is an important subject in planning water resources. The inherent complexity and uncertainty of real world urge many experts to be involved in decision-making processes. This paper presents an application of the linguistic-label aggregation method in a real-life case study. The case was taken from a foresight exercise in Colombia (South America) concerning environmental and water resources planning in a river basin. The group decision-making problem is solved using a four-step approach based on (i) the evaluation of experts' opinions, (ii) the aggregation of opinions for each alternative, (iii) fuzzy ranking, and (iv) final assessment. Two main issues that are new in our work is that we consider temporal linguistic labels and a fuzzy ranking procedure that is able to include the mean, the standard deviation, the fuzzy membership function and the frequency of experts' opinions for each alternative. The approach is developed and implemented on a computational tool. Results show an efficient decision-making process, that is, the tool demonstrated to deal with shortest time frames and to increase the efficiency of the planning resources, mainly because allows the decision manager to focus on the establishment of criteria. The latter also leads to objectivity and eases the identification and discussion of elements of consensus in decisions that otherwise may be embedded in individuals' interests.
KW - Case study
KW - Environment foresight
KW - Fuzzy opinion
KW - Group decision-making
KW - Multi-criteria
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84856232875&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10726-011-9269-z
DO - 10.1007/s10726-011-9269-z
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84856232875
SN - 0926-2644
VL - 21
SP - 205
EP - 232
JO - Group Decision and Negotiation
JF - Group Decision and Negotiation
IS - 2
ER -