Qualitative group decision making process by applying an innovative fuzzy-neural approach

Many qualitative decisions that appear crisp and certain are grounded in fuzziness as a result of the uncertain environment within which the decisions are made. We propose an innovative approach for decision making in such uncertain conditions by using a fuzzy-neural method. The key idea of this proposed approach is to adapt the synaptic neural weight by applying a variance weighting process (VWP) which reduces the fuzziness of group opinions. If such decisions were made by an individual, the fuzzy environment underlay of the apparent crisp decision may not be as visible as it would be within a group environment where the various opinions are observable. Applying VWP, the fuzzy environment can be adjusted by assigning higher neural weights for those factors with lower variance within the group and lower neural weight for those factors with higher variance within the group. In this paper, a simulation study with the proposed fuzzy-neural approach was carried out. The result of the study indicates that this proposed approach can improve the effectiveness of qualitative decision making by providing the decision maker with a new cognitive tool to assist in the reasoning process.