Some construction methods of aggregation operators in decision-making problems: an overview

• Main Authors: Khameneh, Azadeh Zahedi, Kilicman, Adem
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI 2020
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/36520/1/36520.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/36520/; https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/12/5/694
• Institution: Universiti Putra Malaysia

Aggregating data is the main line of any discipline dealing with fusion of information from the knowledge-based systems to decision-making. The purpose of aggregation methods is to convert a list of objects, all belonging to a given set, into a single representative object of the same set usually by an n-ary function, so-called aggregation operator. As the useful aggregation functions for modeling real-life problems are limited, the basic problem is to construct a proper aggregation operator, usually a symmetric one, for each situation. During the last decades, a number of construction methods for aggregation functions have been developed to build new classes based on the existing well-known operators. There are three main construction methods in common use: transformation, composition, and convex combination. This paper compares these methods with respect to the type of aggregating problems that can be handled by each of them.