A linguistic modeling of consensus in group decision making based on OWA operators

In this paper, a model for Group Decision Making is proposed and defined in a linguistic context. A multi-person multi-criteria decision problem is considered, in which a group of experts is involved in the evaluation of the performances of a set of alternatives with respect to a predefined set of criteria. The objective is to evaluate a consensual judgement and a consensus degree on each alternative. Both the experts' evaluations of the alternatives and the degree of consensus are expressed linguistically. A ''soft'' consensus degree referred to a fuzzy majority of the experts is proposed based on the concept of linguistic quantifier. The entire process is defined in a linguistic domain and modeled within fuzzy set theory of Ordered Weighted Average (OWA) operators