Hybrid Data in the Multiobjective Evaluation of Investments

In the process of investment decision making, next to financial indicators many other aspects of investment projects are increasingly often considered. This leads to the multicriteria evaluation of a project. The last decades have shown that the number and complexity of dependencies both inside and outside a company makes it difficult to use the probability theory to represent all kinds of the uncertainty appearing in case of the evaluation of investment projects. Many authors have applied the alternative description of the uncertainty. First of all, fuzzy numbers may be mentioned as an example of the above. This leads to the hybrid description of the uncertainty in the process of the evaluation of the investment. This paper reports an investigation into the design and implementation of hybrid rule-based systems based on the Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence to investment project evaluation. As a result of the investigation, a new methodology will be proposed for multi-criterion project evaluation in the hybrid environment. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of KES International.