The recent boom of various integrated decision-making methods has attracted many researchers to the field. The recent integrated Analytic Network Process and Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (ANP–DEMATEL) methods were developed based on crisp numbers and fuzzy numbers. However, these numbers are incapable of dealing with the indeterminant and inconsistent information that exists in real-life problems. This paper proposes improvements to the integrated ANP–DEMATEL method by bringing together the neutrosophic numbers, the ANP method, and the DEMATEL method, which are later abbreviated to NS-DANP. The proposed NS-DANP method can handle the indeterminacy elements in the decision-making environment, as the single-valued neutrosophic numbers are used in the decision analysis. This proposed NS-DANP modification method includes linguistic variables representing the single-valued neutrosophic numbers (SVNNs), and also introduces the single-valued neutrosophic weighted averaging (SVNWA) aggregation operator to aggregate the decision makers’ judgments instead of the typical averaging method. The applicability of the proposed method is illustrated by a case study of the coastal erosion problem along the Peninsular Malaysia coastline, where 12 factors were considered. Three experts of coastal erosion from different organizations were invited to elicit their linguistic judgments on the cause–effect of the coastal erosion. The seven-step decision approach was developed to acquire the weightage of each coastal erosion factor. The outcome of this study reveals that coastal development is the riskiest factor toward coastal erosion. The weight of factors and the cause–effect diagram could be very helpful for government and stakeholders to project a better mitigation plan for the coastal erosion problem. Comparative analysis is also provided to check the feasibility of the proposed method.
University course timetabling is a well-known management problem amongst researchers, thus the rich body of literature. However, published articles are mainly on improved solution approaches leads to presentation on different constraints used and ignoring human preferences. This however, limits the model application to other universities. The research aims to bridge the gap by acknowledging these varieties of demands. In the process of generating our mathematical model, we have gone through meticulously researches that have been carried out in the past years to determine the demands of individuals involved directly with the timetable. The varieties of demands were clarified from a survey conducted. An improvised UCTP model was developed, which involves a superset of constraints that also includes the users’ preferences. However, we will extensively discuss on the list of requirements obtained from the survey and demonstrate the requirements that were found acceptable to be considered in a general mathematical model. To verify the compatibility of our mathematical model, we illustrate with real data from a university in Malaysia. The experimental result confirms the applicability of our mathematical model towards real problem. We expect that this model could be in favor of solving other university course timetabling problem with slight modifications.
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