A Hesitant Fuzzy Linguistic Multicriteria Decision-Making Method with Interactive Criteria and Its Application to Renewable Energy Projects Selection

Abstract

A variety of multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) methods for renewable energy projects evaluation have been proposed, of which the premise of using these methods is to assume that the criteria are independent of each other. However, it may be difficult or costly to build independent criteria set in some cases because renewable energy planning is to pursue a balance of economic, social, and environmental goals, which makes the existence of interaction among criteria be of great possibility. In this paper, we consider a highly ambiguous decision situation, where the experts are allowed to give the evaluations in the form of hesitant fuzzy linguistic terms set (HFLTS). We build a hesitant fuzzy linguistic decision-making model handling the interaction among criteria from the perspective of distance measure and apply it to renewable energy projects selection. The proposed method can consider more fuzzy factors and deal with the interaction among criteria more approximately. It can reduce the decision pressure and improve the decision-making efficiency because the decision makers are allowed to express their preference in form of HFLTS and a decision criteria set of which the criteria are independent of each other is not necessary.