The Distance Induced OWA Operator with Application to Multi-criteria Group Decision Making

Some aggregation operators with distance measures have been proposed, but distance measure values play the role of argument variables. In this paper, the induced ordered weighted averaging (IOWA) operator with the Hamming distance is proposed, termed as the distance induced ordered weighted averaging (DIOWA) operator. The most distinctive characteristic of the DIOWA operator is that the distance measure values play the role of order-inducing variables. Some properties and special cases of the DIOWA operator are analyzed. This new operator is further extended to the uncertain situations represented by interval numbers. A new multi-criteria group decision-making (MCGDM) method with the proposed operators in this paper is also studied. Finally, a numerical example about how to select the best candidate is given to show how to use the DIOWA operator with interval numbers in group decision making.