Evidential reasoning rule for MADM with both weights and reliabilities in group decision making

Multiple attribute decision making (MADM) problems often include quantitative and qualitative attributes which can be assessed by numerical values and subjective judgements respectively. The evidential reasoning (ER) rule provides a process for dealing with this type of MADM problems of both a quantitative and qualitative nature of uncertainty. In this paper, the ER rule is generalized to dealing with MADM problems in group decision making circumstance where the weights and reliabilities of both experts and attributes are considered. Specifically, the result and process aggregation based ER rules for MADM in group decision making are given respectively, followed by the comparative analysis on the given aggregations. The ER analytical rule for group MADM problems is also provided for the generalization of the ER analytical approach where group decision making is not considered. It is also a development of Yang's ER rule which is a recursive calculation process. Due to the fact that uncertainty and ambiguity are always existent in group decision making, interval weights and reliabilities of experts and attributes should be taken into account in the process of experts' judgment aggregation. In this paper, several ER based programming models under interval weights and reliabilities are constructed for the generation of global belief degrees in a consistent way. A case study is conducted on the life cycle assessment of electric vehicles to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method and the potential in supporting MADM in group decision making.