A group decision making method based on Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence and IOWA operator

Group decision making is a very important technology to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the decision. The unity of multiple experts' opinions is a basic and key problem in the group decision making. In this paper, based on Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence and IOWA operator, a new group decision making method is developed for the aggregation of multiple experts' opinions. A consensus degree is proposed to express the consistency of each expert's individual opinion relative to other experts' opinions. In the proposed method, the consensus degree is used as the order inducing value of IOWA operator and then to determine the discounting operation of each basic probability assignment. The proposed method is superior to the traditional Dempster-Shafer theory based method, an illustrative case is given to show the effectiveness of the new method.