A novel linguistic approach for multi-granular information fusion and decision-making using risk-based linguistic D numbers

The D numbers methodology is a new mathematical approach that has been developed to improve some constraints surrounding evidence theory by managing information uncertainty and incompleteness. Various studies have been conducted on developing D numbers. One of the main extensions of the D numbers methodology is linguistic D numbers, which employs linguistic terms as a set of evaluations of D numbers. In this study, linguistic D numbers are further extended to an interval-valued belief structure. Additionally, to consider the various risk scenarios of each linguistic D number, a risk-based linguistic D numbers model is presented, based on proposed interval-valued linguistic D numbers. The efficiency of the proposed model is investigated by applying it to numerical examples and considering a case study. The results show the robustness of the risk-based linguistic D numbers methodology while simultaneously applying various risk scenarios. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.