Usability analysis of different distance measures on TOPSIS


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KABAK M., Saglam F., AKTAŞ A.

JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE OF GAZI UNIVERSITY, vol.32, no.1, pp.35-43, 2017 (SCI-Expanded) identifier identifier

Abstract

In many decision problems, decision makers face with conflicting objectives. In order to solve decision problems with criteria conflicting each other, multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques are applied. This study deals with TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) technique which is a MCDM approach that leads to determine the decision alternative that is the nearest to the positive ideal solution and the furthest to the negative ideal solution. The proposed form of TOPSIS calculates the distance of decision alternatives to positive and negative ideal solutions by using Euclidean distance formula. In the literature, there aren't many studies that analyse the results obtained by using different distance calculation formulas in TOPSIS technique. Thus, in the scope of this study, it is analysed that what kind of differences or similarities can be obtained by using some different distance calculation techniques in the TOPSIS method. The different calculation methods are introduced and the alternative rankings obtained by using these methods are given. It is seen that the best decision alternative does not change for each method, but the ranking of decision alternatives changes. The obtained results show that providing alternative decisions found by using different distance measures in TOPSIS method can support decision makers to make more consistent and meaningful decisions.