Development of An Equitable Linguistic Approach

Based on Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Set of Multi-Criteria

Decision Making for Flood Control Project Selection
*Note: Sub-titles are not captured in Xplore and should not be used

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

 Nurnadiah Zamri
Faculty of Informatics and Computing,
Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin, Besut
Campus, 22200 Besut, Terengganu,
Malaysia.
nadiahzamri@unisza.edu.my
Syibrah Naim
School of Computer Sciences,
Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800
Pulau Pinang, Malaysia.
syibrah@usm.my
Lazim Abdullah
School of Informatics and Mathematics
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu
Malaysia
lazim_m@umt.edu.my
 Abstract—Flooding is a big issue of widespread concern. It
can be called as a global phenomenon which causes widespread
devastation, economic damages and loss of human lives. Flood
control project selection is needed to overcome the flooding
phenomenon while achieving other objectives such as decreases
the global burden of morbidity, mortality, social and economic
disruptions, and stress on health services. Hence, the selection of
flood control project selection based decision making is
developed to overcome this problem. The preferences of Decision
Makers (DMs) from diverse background are needed to obtain the
best project. However, there are high levels of conflicts faced in
flood control project selection. Hence, there is a need to develop a
method which can consider the various DMs preferences and
criteria in order to achieve the convenience of the various DMs
while handling the faced conflicts. Therefore, we propose a new
equitable linguistic scale which provides a comprehensive
valuation from a group of DMs based on the aggregation of DMs’
opinions and preferences. Besides, we also propose a hybrid
averaging approach of linear orders; consists of ambiguity
method and type-reduction method and (Elimination and Choice
Expressing Reality) ELECTRE-based non-outranked method in
line with the new linguistic scales for Interval Type-2 Fuzzy
Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution
(IT2FTOPSIS) method. We have carried out experiments in the
Department of Drainage of Irrigation agencies located in
Malaysia to evaluate seven different flood control projects
towards the five criteria. It was found that Dikes
(levees/embankment)/Channel improvement/Diversion schemes
is the best flood control project. Besides, it was found that the
proposed IT2FTOPSIS consists of; new equitable linguistic scale,
hybrid averaging approach of linear orders and ELECTRE-
based non-outranked method are able to provide a measure of
the conflicts present among the various DMs. The proposed
IT2FTOPSIS better agrees with the DMs’ decision compared to
existing IT2FTOPSIS and has proved by the correlation values.
Keywords—Multiple criteria decision-making, interval type-2
fuzzy set, ambiguity, type-reduction method, ELECTRE I,
IT2FTOPSIS.
I. INTRODUCTION
Floods are the most significant natural disasters which
affect 4.9 million people and inflict damage worth of several
million every year in Malaysia [1]. The basic cause of flood in
Malaysia is the incidence of heavy monsoon or convective
rainfall and the resultant large concentration of runoff which
has been exacerbated due to rapid development in the river
catchment and deteriorated river capacity [2]. This paper
focuses on flood control project selection to overcome the
flooding phenomenon according to the Decision Makers’
(DMs) preferences in order to maximize the human(s) comfort
and safety while achieving other objectives such as decreases
the global burden of morbidity, mortality, social and economic
disruptions, and stress on health services. However, the DMs
may have various preferences according to their experts and
experiences. Therefore, it was suggested to explore Multiple
Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) systems for flood control
project selection as they are capable of settling the conflicts in
decision making by synthesizing various factors from DMs
judgment.
MCDM is the study of methods and procedures
which is concerned with how multiple conflicting criteria can
be formally incorporated not only in the management planning
process, but in other areas such as medical decision and
intelligent systems [3]. Despite many MCDM techniques, e.g.,
the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) [4], can be enhanced
with incremental analysis by a benefit–cost ratio, TOPSIS
(Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal
Solution) [5] is chosen as the target for the analysis because of
its stability and ease of use with cardinal information. Fuzzy
TOPSIS (FTOPSIS) was introduced to handle uncertainty in
linguistic judgment. Initial research on FTOPSIS was
conducted by Chen [6], who extended TOPSIS to type-1 fuzzy
environments; this extended version used type-1 fuzzy
linguistic value (represented by Type-1 Fuzzy Number
(T1FN) [7]) as a substitute for the directly given crisp value in
grade assessment. However, the existed T1 FTOPSIS still lack
in defining the uncertainties [8]-[11].
Interval Type-2 Fuzzy TOPSIS (IT2FTOPSIS) was
established to overcome the uncertainties problems. It was
first distributed by Chen and Lee [8]. IT2FTOPSIS is believed
to give a room for more flexibility in IT2FTOPSIS due to the
fact that it is uses Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Sets (IT2FSs) rather
than Type-1 Fuzzy Sets (T1FSs) to represent the uncertainties.
The use of IT2FTOPSIS helps in providing successful results
for managing many decision making problem, but there is a
need for a new wave of decision system which considers the
conflicts problems among the experts decision. Therefore, this
paper aims to build a new equitable linguistic scale based
IT2FTOPSIS model in order to provide answers to the
problems encountered in real world decision systems. This
equitable linguistic scales reacts the subjective judgments
from the experts where the lowest of the scale and the highest
of the scale are equally strong, where it offers an equitable in
positive and negative scales. Besides, the positive data is the
subset of all correctly classified examples where negative data
is the rest. The negative data in this study does not mean the
data is wrong or corrupt. The negative data represents as a
hypothesis that can make it well-separated [12]. The positive
and negative is relative.
While considering the propose new equitable
linguistic scale, this paper also presents a hybrid averaging
approach of linear order method to include this new equitable
linguistic scale to formulate a collective decision environment
for ELECTRE-based non-outranked method. The ambiguity
concept by Ban et al. [13] and type-reduction method by Wu
and Mendel [14] are used as the hybrid averaging approach.
Until now, there is no proper discussions on type-reduction in
MADM. Mostly, they used the type-reduction in IT2 fuzzy
logic system [15]-[19]. We choose the type-reduction method
(from [14]) to do a defuzzification process is because they are
fast, real time consuming and low computational volume [20].
They can skip the T1FS process. Which means that, this
method can defuzzify the Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Numbers
(IT2FNs) to crisp numbers [21]. By applying this method, we
offer a new brand generation methods of linear orders for the is called an IT2FS. An interval type-2 fuzzy set can be
conflicting linguistic scale. Then, based on this hybrid linear
regarded as a special case of a T2FS, represented as follows:
orders, we identify the concordance and discordance sets to
determine the concordance and discordance indices,
respectively, for each pair of alternatives. In addition to the
proposed method for determining ELECTRE-based non-
outranked solutions, we provide Positive-Ideal Solutions (PIS) (3)
and Negative-Ideal Solutions (NIS) at the selection stage to
yield the final ranking orders of the alternatives. Thus, the
extension of the PIS and NIS methods with ELECTRE-based
non-outranked solutions method helps to verify the existence
of a concordance of attribute in favour of the assertion that an
alternative is as good as another one, and upon the verification (3.3(3.3)
that strong discordance among the score values that may reject where
the previous assertion does not exist [22]. Later, the proposed
method is applied to the flood control project selection and
correlation coefficients are presented to show the efficiency of III. THE PROPOSED METHOD
the results.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section In this section, a new brand approach to solve the
II provides a brief overview of IT2FSs. Section III presents IT2FTOPSIS method is developed. The propose IT2FTOPSIS
the proposed of IT2FTOPSIS. Section IV reports on the consists of; equitable linguistic scales, hybrid averaging
experiments and results which took place in the Department of approach of linear order method and ELECTRE-based non-
Drainage of Irrigation agencies located in Malaysia. outranked method. DMs provide their relation preference scale
Subsection V presents analysis and results of the correlation of each criterion and alternatives in the new IT2FTOPSIS
values. Section VI presents the conclusions and future work. linguistic scale. Below are the overviews steps of the proposed
IT2FTOPSIS procedures:

Assume that there is a set X of alternatives, where

II. BACKGROUND OF KNOWLEDGE
and assume that there is a set
This section is briefly reviews some definitions of T2FSs and
IT2FSs from Mendel et al. [23]. criteria, where Assume that there are

Definition 2.1 [23] DMs and . The proposed method is now

A T2FS in the universe of discourse can be represented presented as follows:
by a type-2 membership function , shown as follows:
Step 1-3: Problem formulation and input stage
Step 1: Construct a hierarchical diagram of
MCDM problem.
Construct the design matrix of the pth
(1) DM and construct the average decision matrix respectively,
shown as follows:
where denotes an interval in . Moreover, the T2FS
also can be represented as follows:

(2)

where and denotes the union over all

admissible and .

Definition 2.2 [23]

Let be a T2FS in the universe of discourse represented
by the type-2 membership function . If all then
 (4)
(5)
where , is an positive and
negative IT2TrFN (Table 1),
and denotes the number
of DMs.
Table 1: New equitable linguistic terms for the rating and
their corresponding positive and negative IT2TrFN
Linguistic Terms Positive and Negative IT2TrFN
Very Poor (VP) ((-10, -9, -8, -7; 0.8, 0.8),
(-10, -10, -8, -6; 1, 1))
Poor (P) ((-8, -7, -5, -4; 0.8, 0.8),
(-9, -7, -5, -3; 1, 1))
Medium Poor ((-5, -4, -2, -1; 0.8, 0.8),
(MP) (-6, -4, -2, 0; 1, 1))
Medium (M) ((-2, -1, 1, 2; 0.8, 0.8),
(-3, -2, 2, 3; 1, 1))
Medium Good ((1, 2, 4, 5; 0.8, 0.8),
(MG) (0, 2, 4, 6; 1, 1))
Good (G) ((4, 5, 7, 8; 0.8, 0.8),
(3, 5, 7, 9; 1, 1))
Very Good (VG) ((7, 8, 10, 10; 0.8, 0.8),
(6, 8, 10, 10; 1, 1))
Step 2: Define the values of weight
Construct the weighting matrix of the criteria of the DM
and construct the pth average weighting matrix ,
respectively, shown as follows:
(6)
(7)
where , is a positive and
negative IT2TrFN (Table 2), and
denotes the number of DMs.
Figure 1: The new equitable linguistic scale
Table 2: New equitable linguistic terms of weight and their
corresponding positive and negative IT2TrFN
Linguistic Terms Positive and Negative
IT2TrFN
Very Low (VL) ((-1.0, -0.9, -0.8, -0.7; 0.8, 0.8),
(-1.0, -1.0, -0.8, -0.6; 1, 1))
Low (L) ((-0.8, -0.7, -0.5, -0.4; 0.8, 0.8),
(-0.9, -0.7, -0.5, -0.3; 1, 1))
Medium Low (ML) ((-0.5, -0.4, -0.2, -0.1; 0.8, 0.8),
(-0.6, -0.4, -0.2, 0; 1, 1))
Medium (M) ((-0.2, -0.1, 0.1, 0.2; 0.8, 0.8),
(-0.3, -0.2, 0.2, 0.3; 1, 1))
Medium High (MH) ((0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5; 0.8, 0.8),
(0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6; 1, 1))
High (H) ((0.4, 0.5, 0.7, 0.8; 0.8, 0.8),
(0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9; 1, 1))
Very High (VH) ((0.7, 0.8, 1.0, 1.0; 0.8, 0.8),
(0.6, 0.8, 1.0, 1.0; 1, 1))
Figure 1 shows an equitable linguistic scale of positive and
negative IT2TrFN from “Very Low” to “Very High”. “Very
Low”, “Low” and “Medium Low” are stated at the negative
sides of the scale, “Medium” stated intermediate of negative
and positive sides, “Medium High”, “High” and “Very High”
stated at the positive sides of the scale.
Step 3: Construct the weighted of decision matrices
Construct the weighted decision matrix
(8)
where , and
Step 4: Hybrid aggregation stage
Step 4: Construct the hybrid averaging approach using the
linear order method
Employ the linear order hybrid averaging operation to
determine the collective evaluation value of weighted decision where
matrix and the collective importance weight
.
3)

Or we can say as,

The concordance level, , can be defined as the average of

where represented as the elements in the concordance matrix, represented by

and represented as
Step 6: Calculate the discordance matrix
By contrast, the complementary part is known as the
discordance set can be defined as
Step 5-7: ELECTRE computation stage
Step 5: Calculate the concordance matrix where is the
The concordance set of the pair of alternatives and
index of all criteria belonging to the discordance coalition and
is the index set corresponding to the criteria for which it is against the assertion “ is at least as good as .”
is preferred to by comparing their linear order
Thus, the discordance matrix is defined as
and . Specifically,

(9)

where is the index of all criteria belonging to the

concordance coalition with the outranking relation
. (14)
(10)

The relative evaluative value for the concordance set is

measured using the concordance index. The concordance where
index is proportional to the sum of positive and negative
IT2TrFN weights associated with the criteria whose
indices are contained in the concordance set. We denote

(11)

Thus, the concordance matrix is defined as follows,

Note that there are prominent differences between the
elements of and . The concordance matrix reflects
weights of the concordance criteria and the asymmetric
discordance matrix reflects most relative differences (21)
according to the discordance criteria. Both concordance and
discordance indices have to be calculated for every pair of Step 11: Normalize the relative closeness
actions , where . Lastly, normalized the relative closeness as follows:

Step 7: Construct the global matrix

Next, the global matrix is calculated by peer to peer
subtraction of the elements of the matrices and as (22)
follows:
(16)
Step 12: Sort the values.
Rank the preference order. A large value of closeness
The step of this procedure consists of exploitation of the above
coefficient indicates a good performance of the alternative
outranking relation (matrix ) in order to identify as small as
possible a subset of actions, from which the best compromise . The best alternative is the one with the greatest relative
action could be selected. closeness to the ideal solution.

Step 8-12: Selection stage In this proposed IT2FTOPSIS method, we introduce an

Step 8: Determine the PIS and NIS equitable linguistic scale that considers from negative side till
Determine the PIS and NIS respectively positive side of IT2TrFNs. Besides, we also approach the
={ = {( | ), ( | concept of hybrid averaging approach of linear order method
by combining the type-reduction method with ambiguity
)}, method. Moreover, we apply an ELECTRE-based non-
(17) outranking method to obtain the relative closeness
={ = {( | ), ( | coefficients. With an attempt to consider both sides; negative
and positive sides, the linear order approach, and the
)}, (18) ELECTRE-based non-outranking method, it would anticipate
that the proposed IT2FTOPSIS method makes a more
where is associated with the positive attribute, and is comprehensive look.
associated with the negative attribute.
IV. EXPERIMENT AND RESULTS
Step 9: Calculate the distance of PIS and NIS. Flood management in general, plays an important role in
Calculate the separation measures using the n-dimensional protecting people and their property from flooding. In the face
Euclidean distance. The separation of each alternative from of this mounting threat it may be necessary to approach the
the PIS is given as issue of flood management from a novel angle (Murdoch,
2005) [24]. Seven basic schemes of alternatives for flood
control structures recently used to reduce flood damages are
the construction of dam/reservoir (A1), dikes
(levees/embankment)/ channel improvement/ diversion
(19) scheme (A2), pumping station (A3), flood barrier/barrage/flood
gate/flood wall (A4), retention basins/watershed (A5), retention
Similarly, the separation from the NIS is given as pond (A6) and catchment areas (A7). Then, the criteria were
selected based on the alternatives. Five main criteria and sub-
criteria that considered in this study were; Economic factors
(C1): Project costs (C11), Operation and maintenance (C12),
(20) Project benefit (C13), Reliability economic parameter (C 14);
Social factors (C2): Social acceptability (C21), Demographic
Step 10: Calculate the relative closeness changes (C22), Effects on infrastructure (C 23), Recreation
Calculate the relative closeness to the ideal solution. The activity (C24); Environment factors (C3): Climate impact (C31),
Water quality impact (C34), Nature conservation (C32),
relative closeness of the alternative with respect to f* is Sanitary condition (C34); Technical factors (C4): Lifetime
defined as (C41), Adaptability (C42), Level of protection (C43), Technical
complexity (C44), Flexibility of the project (C45); Management
factors (C5): Land use (C51), Area (C52).
 Furthermore, the face-to-face interviews were
conducted based on the questionnaires designed according to
the new IT2FTOPSIS requirement to obtain the equilibrium
closeness coefficients for various criteria, sub-criteria, and
different flood control project options from the four different
DMs. Data in the form of linguistics variables were collected
through interviewing of four authorised personnel (stated as
D1, D2, D3, and D4) from Department of Drainage of Irrigation
agencies. The interview was conducted in four separated
sessions to elicit the information about the best projects that
regularly lead to flood control project selection. The four
authorised personnel are chosen based on their experienced in
the flood control project cases, for many years. Thus, all the
relative importance criteria is described using the equitable
linguistic scales which are defined in Table 2. The DMs used
the equitable linguistic rating scales (see Table 1) to evaluate
the rating of alternatives with respect to each criterion in form
of decision matrix.
Result shows that, the best alternative selection is A2
and the ranking order of the alternative of selecting the best
flood control project is given by
. Dikes (levees/
embankment)/Channel Improvement/Diversion schemes is
ranked first, followed by Flood barrier/Barrage/Flood
gate/Flood wall, River basins/Watershed, Catchment areas,
Retention pond, and Pumping station. Dam/Reservoir is
ranked last. Thus, after taking into account the seven criteria,
twenty sub-criteria and the opinion from the four DMs, a
single measurement for flood control project are obtained and
Dikes (levees/ embankment)/Channel Improvement/Diversion
schemes recorded the highest closeness coefficient at 0.2067.
Since the proposed model introduced a new equitable
standardized approach in the evaluation process, it is
important to compare it with the existing approach. Next
section describes the analysis and results of the comparison
between the output of flood control project selection and other
existed MADM methods.
V. ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Before the experiments were conducted, questionnaires were
distributed randomly to ask all DMs about their opinions and
judgments about flood control project selection needed to
overcome the flooding problem. Four DMs were involved in
the trials which consist from Department of Drainage of
Irrigation agencies located in Malaysia. Their opinions are
constructed in the proposed decision system as a rule-base in a
preference relations decision matrix as showing in the above
section. The ranking to determine output values for different
input values have been defined from 4 sets of input values.
In order to visualize the agreement, we have used the
Spearman Correlation values to investigate the diagnosis
agreement and correlation between real output data of flood
control project selections with the 1) IT2FTOPSIS [8], and 2)
our proposed IT2FTOPSIS. The Spearman Correlation (the
relationship between two variables imitates the grade to which
the variables are associated) which was used to find the
correlation between the user’s decisions and the output
decisions. From the calculations, results are summarized as
Table 3, respectively, as follows:
Table 3: Correlation values between the proposed
IT2FTOPSIS and IT2FTOPSIS [8]
Spearman Correlation Spearman Correlation
for proposed for IT2FTOPSIS [8]
IT2FTOPSIS
D1 0.929 0
p-value=0.003 p-value=1
D2 0.786 0.036
p-value=0.036 p-value=0.939
D3 0.893 0.214
p-value=0.007 p-value=0.645
D4 0.929 0.071
p-value=0.003 p-value=0.879
*Bold value indicates the highest correlation value
The proposed method using the IT2FTOPSIS [8]’s
linguistic scales from Table 3 gives, 0.036 (D 1), 0.393 (D2),
0.107 (D3) and 0.143 (D4) of correlation values. Markedly, the
proposed novel concept, which is based on the equitable
linguistic scales, hybrid averaging approach and IT2FTOPSIS
method, gives 0.929 (D1), 0.786 (D2), 0.893 (D3) and 0.929
(D4) of correlation values.
For all the correlation values, we have seen that the
proposed method which employs the equitable linguistic
scales, hybrid averaging approach of linear orders and
ELECTRE-based non-outranked method gives a higher
Spearman Correlation value than when using IT2FTOPSIS
[8]. This shows that our proposed system using the hybrid IT2
fuzzy theories provides a better correlation by having a much
closer group decision to the human DMs when compared to
the other fuzzy theories (where the higher the correlation
value, the closer the user’s decision to the output from the
proposed system. Besides, the second highest correlation
values goes to the proposed method that used the
IT2FTOPSIS [8]’s linguistic scale. We can conclude that, our
proposed equitable linguistic scale better than the existed
linguistic scale.
VI. CONCLUSION
Flood control project selection need to consider the
preferences of DMs from diverse background. However, there
are high levels of conflicts faced in project selection. Hence,
there is a need to employ decision making systems which can
consider the various DMs preference and criteria in order to
achieve the convenience of the various DMs while handling
the faced conflicts.
In this paper, we have proposed an IT2FTOPSIS
system which provides a comprehensive valuation from a
group of DMs based on the aggregation of DMs’ opinions and
preferences. The theory of the equitable linguistic scale,
hybrid averaging approach of linear order method; consists of
ambiguity method and type-reduction method, and
ELECTRE-based non-outranked method are well suited when
dealing with imprecision and vagueness. Consequently, in this
paper we presented the hybrid concepts between triple of the
theories to employ in IT2FTOPSIS model. This equitable
linguistic scales reacts the subjective judgments from the
experts where the lowest of the scale and the highest of the
scale are equally strong. From this, expert expressed his/her
needs, wants, personality traits, values, experiences, and
subjective judgments based on the equitable linguistic scale.
This equitable linguistic scale has proved to more compatible
to the decisions senses, due to the individuals make decisions
and take actions according to what they perceive to be reality.
While considering the propose equitable linguistic scale, this
paper also presents a hybrid averaging approach of linear
orders method to include this proposed equitable linguistic
scale to formulate a collective decision environment in
IT2FTOPSIS. The ambiguity concept by Ban et al. [13] and
type-reduction method by Wu and Mendel [14] are used as the
hybrid averaging approach of linear order method. By
applying this method, we can avoid of using the existed
ranking value proposed by Chen and Lee [8], where the used
of standard deviation is believed influenced by extreme scores
and the method is depended only on the dispersion’s data. It is
proved by Chen et al. [25], that the ranking value proposed by
Chen and Lee [8] was difficult and higher in computational
volume. Moreover, a non-outranked based method which is
ELECTRE-based method which provides PIS and NIS phase
at the selection stage to yield final ranking orders of the
alternatives. It is differ with existed IT2FTOPSIS [8], where it
is prefer the non-outranking method rather than scoring or
compromising method. Besides, the extension of the PIS and
NIS methods with ELECTRE-based non-outranked solutions
method helps to verify the existence of a concordance of
attribute in favour of the assertion that an alternative is as
good as another one, and upon the verification that strong
discordance among the score values that may reject the
previous assertion does not exist [22].
We have carried out experiments in the Department
of Drainage of Irrigation agencies located in Malaysia to
evaluate seven different flood control projects towards the five
main criteria. It was found that Dikes (levees/
embankment)/Channel Improvement/Diversion schemes is the
best flood control project. Besides, it was found that the
equitable linguistic scale, hybrid averaging approach and
ELECTRE-based non-outranked method are able to provide a
measure of the conflicts present among the various DMs. The
proposed IT2FTOPSIS better agrees with the DMs’ decision
compared to existing IT2FTOPSIS. Through the experiments,
it was found that IT2FTOPSIS [8] gives lower correlation
values compared to our proposed IT2FTOPSIS IT2FTOPSIS
[8]’s linguistic scales and our proposed method. IT2FTOPSIS
[8] which employed T2FSs were able to give a correlation
values 0.0 (D1), 0.036 (D2), 0.214 (D3) and 0.071 (D4) of
correlation values. The proposed method using the Chen and
Lee (2010)[8]’s linguistic scales gives, 0.036 (D1), 0.393 (D2),
0.107 (D3) and 0.143 (D4) of correlation values. Both
correlation values were lower when compared to the proposed
IT2FTOPSIS where the correlation values are 0.929 (D1),
0.786 (D2), 0.893 (D3) and 0.929 (D4) of correlation values.
Thus the proposed IT2FTOPSIS which is based on the
equitable linguistic scale, hybrid averaging approach,
ELECTRE-based non-outranked method; consists of ranking
values method and IT2FTOPSIS method have better ranking
compared to decision system based on IT2FTOPSIS [8]
method.
In our future work, we aim to apply general type-2
membership functions in order to reach higher levels of
uncertainties in decision making system. The general type-2
fuzzy application aggregates the various DMs opinions into a
unique approval which represent the uncertainty distribution
(in the third dimension) associated with the DMs. The
utilization of general type-2 is expected to increase the
agreement values between the IT2FTOPSIS system and DMs’
decision. The higher the agreement values, the more the
control decision system is able to mimic a group of human’s
decision in the flood control project selection.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is supported by Dana Khas Penyelidikan
UNISZA/2016/DPU/10, Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin. This
support is gratefully acknowledged.
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