A hybrid model for decision-making in the Information and Communications Technology sector

Abstract

The majority of businesses in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector face decision-making problems on a daily basis. Most of these problems are based on contexts of uncertainty, where decisions are founded on qualitative information which may be imprecise or perception-based. In these cases, the information which is expressed by experts and users of evaluated services can be treated using processes of computing with words (CW). In this paper, we present a hybrid decision-making model especially designed for the ICT sector whereby the experts have the support of an intelligent system which provides information about the opinions of users related to those problems which are to be analysed. These opinions are obtained by using different mechanisms and techniques when users conduct business with the service provider. In addition, we employ a procedure for obtaining consensus between experts which enriches and strengthens the decision-making process.

Keywords:

• Information and Communications Technology
• multicriteria decision-making
• 2-tuple linguistic computational model
• computing with words

JEL Classification:

• D81
• D83
• M15
• L86
• L96

Additional information

Andrés CID-LÓPEZ got his Electronic Engineer title in the Specialty of Semiconductor Devices and Microelectronic (degree of Master of Science), in the Polytechnic Institute of Lvov (Ukraine, 1988). In 2002, he received his Master in Management of Telecommunication Enterprises, in the Polytechnical School of the Litoral (Ecuador, 2002). He has been linked for more than twenty years to the Telecommunication Business. Since 2012, he is a PhD candidate of the Official PhD Program on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) at the Higher Technical School of Computer and Telecommunication Engineering, University of Granada (Spain). His main research interests are service quality and decision-making models in the ICT sector.

Miguel J. HORNOS is a senior lecturer at the University of Granada (Spain), where he previously received both an MSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Computing. His main fields of research are Multicriteria Decision-Making, Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligent Environments, Specification and Verification of Complex Software Systems, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Applied to Business and Education, on which he has written several textbooks as well as around 90 research papers published in international journals and conferences specialized on these topics. He is currently involved in various (European, national, regional and local) Research, Development and Innovation (R&D&I) Projects. Dr Hornos is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments (published by Springer) and is also serving as reviewer for several international journals and conferences.

Ramón Alberto CARRASCO received his PhD degree in Computing from Granada University, Granada, Spain, in 2003. He currently leads the data mining lab applied to marketing and market Research at the Spanish bank BMN. His fields of research include NoSQL databases, data mining, data warehouse, sentiment analysis, business intelligence, decision making models and intelligent information systems applied to marketing, business, tourism and education, on which he has written several textbooks as well as around 50 research papers published in international journals and conferences specialized on these topics. He has been involved in various R&D&I projects and is serving as reviewer for several international journals and conferences. He is a member of the SCI2S Research Group. He has been an assistant Professor at the University of Granada (from 2004 to 2013) and at the Complutense University, Madrid, Spain (from 2013), where he teaches in the Master of Data Mining and Business Intelligence.

Enrique HERRERA-VIEDMA is Full Professor in Computer Science of the Dept. of Computer Science and A.I., University of Granada (Spain). He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Granada (Spain) in 1996, and from 1999 to 2015 he was Vice-dean of Research of the Library Science School, University of Granada. From July 2015 he is Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation in University of Granada. He has published more than 300 refereed journal and conference papers related with the areas of fuzzy decision making, computing with words, linguistic preference modelling, fuzzy information retrieval, recommender systems, Web quality, social media, digital libraries and bibliometrics. Dr. Herrera-Viedma is Associate Editor in IEEE Trans. on Systems Man and Cybernetics: Systems, Information Sciences, J. of Intelligent and Fuzzy Systems, Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making, Knowledge Based Systems, Applied Soft Computing and Soft Computing. His H-index is 46 according to the WoS with more than 8000 citations and 64 according to Google Scholar with more than 16000 citations. He has recently published in Science [339:6126 (2013) p. 1382] on the new role of the public libraries, and in 2014 he was included in the List of Highly Cited Researchers in Engineering by Thomson Reuters.