MCDM approach based on generalized fuzzy decision map method

Multi Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) methods mainly help finding the most desirable alternatives from a set of available alternatives versus the selected criteria. Fuzzy Decision Maps (FDM) method has been proposed in 2006 for handling MCDM problems with dependency and feedback to overcome the complexity drawback of Analytic Network Process (ANP). However, the structure of FDM method was designed to deal with single level only. Therefore, it calculates only the numerical priorities among criteria. But in complex real world MCDM problems, many levels of criteria / sub-criteria should be manipulated between goals and alternatives. This paper presents a generalized FDM method that is capable of handling the case of multilevel criteria/sub criteria and alternatives. The generalized FDM method is called Multi Level Fuzzy Decision Map (ML-FDM). An agricultural case study for selecting wheat variety to cultivate in Egypt is used to demonstrate how the proposed ML-FDM method can be applied in a real world example.