Fuzzy delphi method: Issues and challenges
The Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) is the modified and enhanced version of the classical Delphi technique. Improvement was made to rectify the imperfection of traditional Delphi Method (DM) that leads to low convergence in retrieving outcomes, loss of important information, and long progress of investigation. Nevertheless, this approach has been employed in various application domains, including humanities, management, business, physical science, and engineering. Furthermore, the literature has exposed numerous key issues in relation to the existing FDM that need to be resolved with regard to the classical DM. Hence, the analysis obtained from the existing literature highlighted two key issues, which were; i) most FDM ignored certain important characteristics of DM, and ii) lack of explanation on how FDM obtained controlled feedback with the lack of iteration process. Additionally, it was observed that there had been lack of comparison between decision outcomes obtained based on FDM and the decision outcomes obtained from the traditional DM.
Fuzzy MADM-Based Model for Prioritization of Investment Risk in Iran’s Mining Projects
Investment in mineral industries always deals with various economic, political, technical, and environmental risks. Not paying enough attention to such risks increases the possibility of investment failure. Accordingly, in this study, the risk criteria for investing in mineral industries and sub-criteria for risk assessment according to the type of industries, including mineral exploration, exploitation, and processing projects, have been identified and prioritized. In this regard, a methodology is presented based on multi-attribute decision-making methods, including Fuzzy Delphi, DEMATEL, and ANP methods to identify and analyze the risk criteria and evaluate sub-criteria. The results indicate that financial and commercial, technical, HSE, infrastructural considerations, geological, political, security, and legal risks are the main risk measures affecting investment in mining projects with different priorities. From the viewpoint of investment risk assessment in mineral processing and exploration projects, technical, financial and commercial, and geological risk criteria are the most significant, respectively. Generally, all risk criteria must be considered to make a reasonable investment in the mining sector, especially those more important.
Looking for regional words in late seventeenth-century England: Bishop White Kennett and his glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695) 1
The analysis of regional dialects in the Early Modern period has commonly been disregarded in favour of an ample scholarly interest in the ‘authorised’ version of English which came to be eventually established as a standard. The history of regional ‘Englishes’ at this time still remains to a very great extent in oblivion, owing mainly to an apparent dearth of direct textual evidence which might provide trustworthy data. Research in this field has been for the most part focused on phonological, orthographical and morphological traits by virtue of the rather more abundant information that dialect testimonies yield about them. Regional lexical diversity has, on the contrary, deserved no special attention as uncertainty arises with regard to what was provincially restricted and what was not. This paper endeavours to offer additional data to the gloomy lexical setting of Early Modern regional English. It is our aim to give a descriptive account of the dialect words collated by Bishop White Kennett’s glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695). This underutilised specimen does actually widen the information furnished by other well known canonical word-lists and provides concrete geographical data that might contribute to bridging the gaps still existing in the history of lexical provincialisms at the time.