Simplifying the minimax disparity model for determining OWA weights in large-scale problems

Abstract: In the context of multicriteria decision making, the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) functions play a crucial role in aggregating multiple criteria evaluations into an overall assessment supporting the decision makers' choice. Determining OWA weights, therefore, is an essential part of this process. Available methods for determining OWA weights, however, often require heavy computational loads in real-life large-scale optimization problems. In this paper, we propose a new approach to simplify the well-known minimax disparity model for determining OWA weights. For this purpose, we use to the binomial decomposition framework in which natural constraints can be imposed on the level of complexity of the weight distribution. The original problem of determining OWA weights is thereby transformed into a smaller scale optimization problem, formulated in terms of the coefficients in the binomial decomposition. Our preliminary results show that a small set of these coefficients can encode for an appropriate full-dimensional set of OWA weights.