A group decision method based on prospect theory for emergency situations

Urgent and critical situations or so-called emergency events, such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters, often require crucial decisions. When an emergency event occurs, emergency decision making plays an important role in dealing with it, and hence, its importance nowadays is increasing. In the real world, it is difficult for only one decision maker to take a comprehensive decision for coping with an emergency event. Consequently, many practical emergency problems are often characterized by a group emergency decision making (GEDM) scheme. Different studies show that human beings are usually bounded rational under risk and uncertainty, and their psychological behavior is very important in the decision-making process. However, such behavior is neglected in current GEDM studies. Therefore, this study proposes a novel GEDM method that considers experts' psychological behavior in the GEDM process. The method is then applied to a case study and compared with other related approaches. Finally, discussions are presented to illustrate the novelty, feasibility, and validity of the proposed GEDM method, showing the importance of experts' psychological behavior in GEDM. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.