Optimized distance measures on hesitant fuzzy numbers: An application

As the rapidly progressing applications of uncertainty theories, the need for modifications to some of their existing mathematical tools or creating new tools to deal correctly with them in various environments is also exposed. Hesitant fuzzy numbers (HFNs), as a particular case of fuzzy numbers, are not an exception to this rule. Considering the necessity of determining the distance between given HFNs in many of their practical applications, this article shows that the existing methods either do not provide correct results or are not able to meet the needs of users. This paper aims to present new methods for distance measures of hesitant fuzzy numbers. To do them, three prevalent distance measures, i.e., the generalized distance measure, the Hamming distance measure, and the Euclidean distance measure, will be optimized into three distinct trinal categories. With the approach of reducing error propagation via reducing some unnecessary mathematical computations, new distance measures on HFNs will be introduced, first. The middle is the modification of the first category, which is more suitable when the given HFNs are equal-distance by the previous formula. Also, as the third category, the weighted form of these distance measures has been proposed, to be used where the real and membership parts of HFNs are not of equal importance. As an application of these, a TOPSIS-based technique for solving multi-attribute group decision-making problems with HFNs has been proposed. A numerical example will be implemented to describe the presented method. Finally, along with the validation of the proposed method, its numerical comparison with some other existing methods will be discussed in detail.