Group decision-making approach based on the distance measure of linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy sets and VIKOR technique

In this article, we propose a group decision-making (GDM) approach for the linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy numbers (LIFNs) environment. For this, we propose a new distance measure for linguistic intuitionistic fuzzy sets (LIFSs). We also provide proof of validity and different desirable properties of the proposed LIFS distance measure. The proposed distance measure can overcome the drawbacks of existing distance measures of LIFSs, which have the drawbacks that they cannot classify the unknown pattern with the known patterns. Based on the proposed distance measure of LIFSs and the “VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje” (VIKOR) technique, we propose a new GDM approach in LIFNs environment. Finally, we utilize the proposed GDM approach to solve some GDM problems of LIFNs environment, and compare the ranking order (RO) obtained by the proposed GDM approach with the ROs obtained by the existing GDM approaches of LIFN environment. The comparison study’s results demonstrate that the proposed GDM approach can overcome the drawbacks of the existing GDM approaches, where they cannot distinguish the ROs of alternatives in some situations. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.