Revisiting Fuzzy and Linguistic Decision-Making: Scenarios and Challenges for Wiser Decisions in a Better Way

This paper provides a brief tour through the main fuzzy and linguistic decision-making trends, studies, methodologies and models developed in the last 50 years. Fuzzy and linguistic decision-making approaches allow to address complex real-world decision problems where humans exhibit vagueness, imprecision and/or use natural language to assess decision alternatives, criteria, etc. The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, the main fuzzy set theory and computing with words based representation paradigms of decision information, with their different levels of expressive richness and complexity, are reviewed. Secondly, three core decision-making frameworks are examined: (1) multi-criteria decision-making, (2) group consensus-driven decision-making, and (3) multi-person multi-criteria decision making. Thirdly, the paper discusses new complex decision making frameworks that have emerged in recent years, where decisions are guided by the “wisdom of the crowd”: their associated challenges are highlighted and considerations on much needed key guidelines for future research in the field are provided.