Probabilistic double hierarchy linguistic term set and its use in designing an improved VIKOR method: The application in smart healthcare

Abstract

Double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic term set (DHHFLTS) can be used to express complex linguistic information by combining two hierarchy linguistic term sets with 2-tuple linguistic structures. In decision-making processes, experts’ assessment information may often be represented by some possible double hierarchy hesitant fuzzy linguistic elements (DHHFLEs) or some DHHFLEs with probability information, and we cannot ignore these probabilities when they are directly provided or aggregated by the experts’ assessments. As we are aware that representing probability information is a new improvement and challenge for DHHFLTSs, this paper defines a novel and more general concept named probabilistic double hierarchy linguistic term set (PDHLTS). Then, to propose some more reasonable operations and a distance measure of PDHLTSs, we develop an adjustment method to ensure that two PDHLTSs have same probability distribution. Additionally, this paper develops an extended probabilistic double hierarchy linguistic VIKOR method by improving the traditional VIKOR method. Moreover, the advantages and practicality of the proposed method are demonstrated by applying it to solve a practical multiple criteria decision-making problem involving smart healthcare. Finally, we make some comparative analyses, as well as discussing possible directions for future studies.

Keywords:

• Probabilistic double hierarchy linguistic term set
• multiple criteria decision-making
• probability adjustment method
• probabilistic double hierarchy linguistic VIKOR method
• smart healthcare

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 71771155, the 2020 Sichuan Planning Project of Social Science under Grant SC20B044, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant YJ202015 and 2020ZY-SX-C01, the 2020 Key Project of the Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Sichuan Province–the Research Center for System Science and Enterprise Development under Grant Xq20B03, and the Project of the Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Sichuan colleges and Universities–Sichuan Special Education Research Center of Leshan Normal University under Grant SCTJ-2020-B03.