A proposal of a linguistic group decision model to support public decisions in Brazil

This paper presents a linguistic group decision model, which contains a stage for construction of the linguistic scale, which will be used by a group to evaluate a set of actions. The technique used to construct the scale allows inserting the individuals and the context in the modeling process, making the semantic values of the terms more representative of the real meaning of the language according to perceptions of the individuals who will use the scale. The model was applied to simulate one of the voting steps of the Participatory Budgeting of Recife, Brazil. The model provides a simple, complete and transparent way for evaluation of the actions´ priorities, since decision makers express their judgment by means of a simple everyday language. Moreover, decision makers are encouraged to express an opinion on all actions considered, making the preference profile more complete.