Extension card · Fuzzy
Fuzzy WASPAS (Turskis, Zavadskas, Antuchevičienė and Kosareva, 2015)
This is the form of WASPAS used when criterion scores are given as triangular fuzzy numbers rather than crisp measurements. It computes the sum and product components with triangular arithmetic, then reduces the result to a single number by its centroid.
Base method
WASPAS →
Philosophy, mechanics, strengths and weaknesses are on the base method card; this card describes only the difference.
Data type (family)
Fuzzy →
What this data type is, when to use it, how to write it in a cell: the family's full account is here.
What Changes from the Base Method?
Four things change; the logic of blending the sum and the product does not.
Cells. In crisp WASPAS every cell is a single number. Here every cell is a triangular fuzzy number (lowest, most likely, highest). Criterion weights, too, may be entered as triangles; if a crisp weight is given instead, DecisionMind expands it into a triangle with all three components identical (w, w, w) — this does not add width to a measured weight, it only fits it to the structure.
Scale equalisation. Crisp WASPAS divides every column by its own best crisp value. Here, for a benefit criterion, all three components of each triangle are divided by the largest upper value in the column. For a cost criterion, the smallest lower value in the column is taken and divided into the triangle's three components in reverse order: the lowest component divides this constant by the upper value, the highest component divides it by the lower value. Without this reversal the division would break the lowest-most likely-highest order; Turskis's equalisation deliberately preserves it.
Sum and product component. The weighted-sum (WSM) component multiplies the equalised triangle by the weight triangle component by component and sums this as a triangle across criteria; this is the crisp WASPAS summation carried out separately on the three components. The weighted-product (WPM) component is built by raising the equalised triangle to the weight's power; here too, exponentiation reverses the corners (the triangle's lowest component is raised using the weight's highest plausible form, and its highest component using the weight's lowest form), because fuzzy exponentiation produces a narrowing interval as the exponent grows, and this reversal is needed to preserve the order.
Result and defuzzification. For each alternative, the sum component's three corners are added across criteria and the product component's three corners are multiplied; each triangle is then reduced to a single number by the average of its three corners (the centroid). In crisp WASPAS, λ is a fixed coefficient supplied from outside (0.5 if not stated); here DecisionMind does not treat λ as fixed. Instead it computes λ adaptively from the two defuzzified components' (sum and product) share of the total across all alternatives. This is the only extension in the WASPAS family where λ stops being a user decision and becomes a data-driven output.
In Fuzzy WASPAS, DecisionMind fixes this scale equalisation, the corner-wise sum/product rules, and the adaptive λ calculation; weights are taken from outside, the method does not generate weights.
How to Read the Output
The output is a combined score and a ranking, as in crisp WASPAS; it is read the same way: it is not a percentage or a probability, and it cannot be compared with a different analysis.
The difference is here: λ is no longer a decision to be explained in the report as a chosen value, it is an outcome that emerges from the data itself. The report should therefore state what value λ settled at, and whether it reflects that the sum component or the product component dominated. Beneath the score also lies a chain of triangles, and the score conceals this. The score difference between two alternatives may or may not be meaningful, depending on the width of the inputs.
Thus instead of writing:
"According to Fuzzy WASPAS, A2 is the best alternative"
the report should read:
"The adaptive λ came out at 0.49, meaning the sum and product components contributed almost equally; with these weights, A2 has the highest combined score, and this does not change if the two criteria's weights are swapped"
When to Prefer This over the Base Method
Use this extension when criteria are scored through verbal or approximate expert judgement, and reducing that judgement to a single number would create artificial precision. Stay with the base method when criteria are measured: opening a measured number into a triangle is not modelling uncertainty, it is manufacturing it. If the table is mixed and DecisionMind requires a single data type, a measured criterion is also written as a triangle with all three components equal; this embedding adds no uncertainty.
WASPAS's exit condition applies unchanged: this extension too is compensatory and is unsuitable when no compromise is acceptable on one criterion; if a weight, not a ranking, is being sought, fuzzy or crisp weighting methods such as AHP, BWM, CRITIC or Entropy should be used instead.
Mistakes Specific to This Extension
Breaking the triangle's order. Every cell's lowest, most likely and highest component must appear in this order; if data entry breaks this order (for example, entering a most-likely value greater than the highest), the scale-equalisation and exponentiation steps produce a meaningless result.
Changing the defuzzification method arbitrarily. The centroid (the average of the three components) is the sole, fixed rule here; a different defuzzification (such as taking only the most likely value) can produce a different ranking and becomes inconsistent with Turskis's steps.
Defuzzifying first and then running crisp WASPAS. Reducing the triangles to a single number at the outset and applying the crisp method is not Fuzzy WASPAS; how the sum and product components grow corner by corner is then invisible.
Fixing λ by hand. In this extension, λ is an output of the data; fixing it at 0.5, as in other WASPAS extensions, or entering it manually, cancels the method's adaptive-blending contribution.
Giving crisp weights alongside fuzzy scores. This is not itself a problem; DecisionMind expands a crisp weight into a degenerate triangle. But the report should note that this expansion adds no width.
The governing principle is this:
In Fuzzy WASPAS, the triangle's order, the defuzzification rule and the adaptive calculation of λ form the method's fixed skeleton; changing any one of them by hand means the result is no longer Turskis's WASPAS-F.
Cases
The first case is DecisionMind's validation example: not the real construction-site data from Turskis and colleagues' paper, but a triangular table with zero-width (degenerate) corners, built to make the WASPAS-F formulas traceable by hand. The second case is illustrative fiction.
1. Illustrative example (DecisionMind's validation example): Three candidates for a construction site
A contractor is choosing among three plots for a new factory site. Three criteria: a transport-access score, a soil-suitability score, and an estimated site-preparation cost index (the last one "lower is better"). In this validation example the experts are in full agreement on every criterion, so the cells are entered as zero-width triangles (lowest = most likely = highest); the weights are also given as crisp values expanded into degenerate triangles.
| Plot | Transport access | Soil suitability | Preparation cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | (3; 3; 3) | (4.833; 4.833; 4.833) | (4; 4; 4) |
| A2 | (4.833; 4.833; 4.833) | (3; 3; 3) | (2; 2; 2) |
| A3 | (4; 4; 4) | (4; 4; 4) | (3; 3; 3) |
| Direction | higher is better | higher is better | lower is better |
| Weight | (0.40; 0.40; 0.40) | (0.35; 0.35; 0.35) | (0.25; 0.25; 0.25) |
The method equalises each column by Turskis's rule, builds the weighted-sum and weighted-product components as triangles, reduces each triangle to a single number by its centroid, and blends them with the adaptive λ. Because this table has zero width, the result coincides exactly with what crisp WASPAS gives on the same numbers.
| Plot | Combined score | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| A2 | 0.857 | 1 |
| A3 | 0.786 | 2 |
| A1 | 0.709 | 3 |
The result reads as follows. The adaptive λ came out at 0.494; the sum and product components contributed at almost equal weight. A2 comes out ahead because it has the best score on transport access, the heaviest criterion, and simultaneously the lowest, and thus best, preparation cost; A1 is not the best on any criterion and comes last.
There may be a hesitation here: would the ranking change if the weights of the two heaviest criteria (transport at 0.40 and soil at 0.35) were swapped? When the same algorithm is re-run independently in Python, A2 (0.837) still comes first, A3 (0.786) still second, and A1 (0.727) still last. The ranking is robust to the weight swap. Likewise, when a genuine uncertainty width is added to A1's transport-access score, making it (2; 3; 4), the ranking still does not change.
In the report: "With an adaptive λ of 0.494, the sum and product components contributed in balance; A2, at 0.857, is the alternative closest to the ideal, and this result is robust against a swap of the two criteria's weights."
Source: This case is DecisionMind's validation example for the Fuzzy WASPAS engine; the cells are not taken from the construction-site table in Turskis, Zavadskas, Antuchevičienė and Kosareva's (2015) paper, but form a synthetic table deliberately built with zero-width triangles so that the WASPAS-F formulas (Eqs. 15-24) can be traced by hand; the combined scores and sensitivity scenarios were independently recomputed by this card's author.
2. Retail: Choosing among three candidate neighbourhoods for a new store
A retail chain is assessing three neighbourhoods for a new branch. The criteria are: pedestrian-traffic potential, fit with the target customer profile, and a rent-cost index (the last one "lower is better"). Because pedestrian traffic and customer fit cannot be measured numerically and instead rest on the company's field team's observations and interviews, they have been scored on a seven-term verbal scale and converted into triangles; rent cost has been entered as a triangle built from three market-research scenarios (lowest, expected, highest).
The method equalises the three neighbourhoods, builds the sum and product components as triangles, and blends them with the adaptive λ. Suppose the neighbourhood with the highest pedestrian traffic also has the highest rent cost, and still comes out first on the combined score because it is also strong on customer fit; the lowest-rent neighbourhood comes second, and the neighbourhood with middling traffic but weak customer fit comes third.
The chain may hesitate here. Would the ranking change if the first neighbourhood's pedestrian-traffic score had been given by the field expert as "high" rather than "very high"? This shows whether the ranking rests on a single-term difference in the field team's observation; the report should also state whether λ leans on the sum or the product component.
In the report: "The field team's verbal scores were converted into triangles using the seven-term scale, and rent cost was entered as a three-scenario triangle; the first neighbourhood has the highest combined score, but this result is sensitive to the pedestrian-traffic score being pulled down by one term, and the field team's scale consistency should be separately verified."
3. What Not to Do
Widening the illustrative example's zero-width triangles afterwards, say to (2; 3; 4), to give the impression that the experts were "not really certain": this manufactures an uncertainty that does not exist and shifts the defuzzified scores without justification. The second error is equalising the cost criterion the same way as a benefit criterion, by dividing by the column's largest upper value; this skips Turskis's reversal rule and breaks the triangle's order. The third error is writing 0.5 by hand out of habit from another WASPAS extension instead of using the adaptive λ; this cancels the method's own contribution of deriving λ from the data itself.
Sources
For the formulas behind each step, the intermediate tables and citation formats, see the DecisionMind method page: decisionmind.app/library/fuzzy-waspas
Turskis, Z., Zavadskas, E. K., Antuchevičienė, J., & Kosareva, N. (2015). A hybrid model based on fuzzy AHP and fuzzy WASPAS for construction site selection. International Journal of Computers Communications & Control, 10(6), 873–888. DOI: 10.15837/ijccc.2015.6.2078
Zavadskas, E. K., Turskis, Z., Antuchevičienė, J., & Zakarevičius, A. (2012). Optimization of weighted aggregated sum product assessment. Elektronika ir Elektrotechnika, 122(6), 3–6. DOI: 10.5755/j01.eee.122.6.1810
Zadeh, L. A. (1965). Fuzzy sets. Information and Control, 8(3), 338–353. DOI: 10.1016/S0019-9958(65)90241-X
Chen, C.-T. (2000). Extensions of the TOPSIS for group decision-making under fuzzy environment. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 114(1), 1–9. DOI: 10.1016/S0165-0114(97)00377-1