Rule sets based bilevel decision model and algorithm

Bilevel decision addresses the problem in which two levels of decision makers, each tries to optimize their individual objectives under certain constraints, act and react in an uncooperative, sequential manner. As bilevel decision making often involves many uncertain factors in real world problems, it is hard to formulate the objective functions and constraints of the leader and the follower in modelling a real bilevel decision problem. This study explores a new approach that uses rule sets to formulate a bilevel decision problem. It first develops related theories to prove the feasibility to model a bilevel decision problem by rule sets. It then proposes an algorithm to describe the modelling process. A case study is discussed to illustrate the functions and effectiveness of the proposed rule sets based bilevel decision modelling algorithm.