Developing an Intelligent Multi Criteria Clustering Method Based on PROMETHEE

Abstract

In recent years, a new issue called "multi-criteria clustering" has emerged that aims at grouping alternatives into homogeneous classes called clusters according to different evaluation criteria. Following the related studies in literature, by combining K-means algorithm and PROMETHEE technique, this paper aims to present a new multi-criteria clustering method. The parameters of the problem are the cluster separator profiles which genetic algorithm (GA) is used to optimize them. In the modeling process in each stage of updating responses, alternatives allocate to the nearest cluster according to the distance of their pure flow of privileges from the profiles. The mutation operator is only applied when the chromosomes’ similarity level in each population reaches to a certain level which this intelligence reduces the computation time. Finally, by simulating the proposed algorithm and some well-known clustering algorithms based on the several financial databases the efficiency of the algorithm compared to other algorithms. The results show the algorithm, in addition to determine the optimal number of clusters in comparison to other algorithms, also provides better results.

Keywords

• multi-criteria clustering
• genetic algorithm
• k-means algorithm
• silhouette index
• promethee