Abstract
The data are ever increasing with the increase in population, communication of different devices in networks, Internet of Things, sensors, actuators, and so on. This increase goes into different shapes such as volume, velocity, variety, veracity, and value extracting meaningful information and insights, all are challenging tasks and burning issues. Decision-making based on multicriteria is one of the most critical issues solving ways to select the most suitable decision among a number of alternatives. Deep learning algorithms and multicriteria-based decision-making have effective applications in big data. Derivations are made based on the use of deep algorithms and multicriteria. Due to its effectiveness and potentiality, it is exploited in several domains such as computer science and information technology, agriculture, and business sector. The aim of the proposed study is to present a systematic literature study in order to show the applications of deep learning algorithms and multicriteria decision approaches for the problems of big data. The research finds novel means to make the decision support system for the problems of big data using multiple criteria in integration with machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches.
1. Introduction
With the increase in population, communication of different devices in networks, Internet of Things, sensors, actuators, and so on, the size of data is increasing. This increase goes into different shapes such as volume, velocity, variety, veracity, and value extracting meaningful information and insights which are challenging tasks and burning issues. According to IDC [1], in late 2011, about 1.8 ZB of data was created. Globally, per year about 1.2 ZB (1021) is generated by different sources as electronic data [2]. By 2020, data are expected to 40 ZB [3]. Tools and techniques should be available to handle big data in an easy and effective way. The tools should have the capability to process the data, apply different filtering process to extract meaningful insights, cooperate, and communicate with other tools during data exchange.
Decision-making on big data based on multicriteria is one of the challenging issues for researchers and practitioners. To make decision based on appropriate numbers of choices, effectiveness, and potentiality, researchers are finding novel means to make the decision support system for the problems of various application domains of big data by using multiple criteria in integration with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Several decision support systems are available which have the potential to support decision-making activities [4–7]. Decision-making plays an important role in the success of a business or an organization. Based on multiple criteria, the decision-making is difficult as there are several available criteria for the decision to take action.
In the recent approaches for solving problems of big data, the decision support systems are facilitated with the integration of deep learning algorithms to provide a more intelligent decision support system [8–10]. The decision support system has several applications in diverse areas such as business [11], energy sector [12], and agriculture [13]. Various domains explain the theories and methods which come from simple to more advanced and intelligent models for decision making [14, 15].
Keeping in view the effectiveness and importance of adopting the decision support system (DSS) along with the use of deep learning algorithms, the proposed study presents a systematic literature review of the last five (05) years from 2016 to 2020. The aim of the proposed study is to identify the trends, scope, and methods from the existing literature in order to present an improved decision support system with integration of deep learning solutions to tackle big data. Keywords were defined based on the research questions for conducting the survey, and the papers were included based on the criteria of quality assessment. The selected papers from the literature were further analysed to answer the research questions of the study.
Experimental results of the proposed study show that deep learning algorithms and decision support systems are exploited in a useful way. The research integrated power machine learning as well as artificial intelligence and multicriteria decision-making models to provide effective solutions to problems which are more complex.
The organization of the paper is as follows: next section represents the research method with the details of the protocol followed for conducting the proposed research. Section 3 represents the results and discussion section of the paper with the analysis of answering the research questions. The paper concludes in Section 4.
2. Research Method
Systematic literature review is a protocol of conducting literature review of a specific research and systematically collects the research papers based on the defined research questions and keywords, analyzing the selected studies in order to assess the applications and impact of the study. Several guidelines are suggested by the researcher for conducting a systematic literature review. The guidelines are followed in the proposed system literature survey [16, 17]. The following sections briefly show the research method and protocol followed for conducting the proposed study. Figure 1 shows the generic process of conducting the SLR.
2.1. Research Plan and Method
For conducting an efficient and successful search process, the following famous libraries were searched in order to get most relevant materials:(i)ACM(ii)IEEE Xplore(iii)ScienceDirect(iv)Springer(v)Taylor and Francis(vi)Wiley Online
2.2. Research Questions
The following are the research questions (RQs) of the proposed study:(i)RQ1: what are the techniques and applications of multicriteria decision in big data?(ii)RQ2: what are the applications of deep learning algorithms in big data?(iii)RQ3: how to analyze the existing literature for the applications of multicriteria and deep learning algorithms in big data?
2.3. Search Process
The search process is very tricky due to the reason that a paper should not be missed. Six popular libraries that are ACM, IEEE, ScienceDirect, Springer, Taylor and Francis, and Wiley Online were considered for the search process. Initially, research questions were defined. The reason behind the selection of these libraries is that these libraries are dominant in the field and publishing quality research work which are mostly peer reviewed. After that, the following keywords were defined with different Boolean operators to search the query: (“Deep learning” OR “Machine learning”) AND (“multi-criteria” OR “MCDM”) AND (“big data” OR “Data”)
Searching the libraries by the individual keywords is not an effective way to select appropriate materials. So, for this, the keywords were combined by logical operators such as “AND” and “OR” to formulate effective queries. The formulated query for search is then applied on each library to select papers that are published in the last 5 years (2016–2020). As only single keyword is not enough to identify relevant research studies, similar keywords are identified for each of the keyword term. Figure 2 shows the process of conducting the search and filtering process.
2.4. Study Selection
The designed query was searched in the specified libraries in order to obtain the relevant associated materials for the proposed study. Among these libraries, the filtering process was performed for the year range from 2016 to 2020. Using this procedure, query is applied and search results are obtained, which is shown in detail in Table 1.
From each of the libraries, the papers were filtered by title, abstract, and content. All the papers are then analysed based on its contents, and the most final set of relevant papers is selected. The final selected papers are analysed to answer the research questions and to achieve the objectives of the study. Figure 3 shows the search and filtering results in the given libraries.
Figure 4 shows the initial results of the journal/magazine names along with the total number of publications in the ACM library.
Figure 5 shows the proceeding names with the number of publications.
Figure 6 shows the content types along with the number of publications.
Figure 7 shows the publication topics along with the number of papers in the IEEE library.
Figure 8 shows the number of publications in the given year in the ScienceDirect library.
Figure 9 shows the article type along with the number of papers.
Figure 10 shows the publication title with the number of papers.
Figure 11 shows the publication disciplines in the Springer library.
Figure 12 shows the publication type with their number of papers.
Figure 13 shows the number of selected papers in all the given libraries including ACM, IEEE, ScienceDirect, Springer, Tailor and Francis, and Wiley Online Library.
The final list of the selected papers is given in Figure 14.
2.5. Quality Assessment
The quality of the selected papers was aimed to check for showing the relevancy of the selected papers to the proposed research. Scores of 0, 0.5, and 1 were adopted to give a score to the research questions based on the specific research paper. The score 0 was given to the paper which do not satisfy the research question, 0.5 for the paper which partially satisfies the research question, and 1 for paper which fully satisfies the research questions. The quality evaluation of selected papers is depicted in Figure 15.
3. Results and Discussion
Big data contains a huge amount of information which needs to be extracted for a specific purpose of the user. Such kind of data is very difficult to manage, organize, and structure. Various tools are used for extracting meaningful information and insights. The applications of machine learning algorithms play an important role in real life. The machine learning has been used mostly for classification purposes [18]. Figure 16 shows the 5 Vs of big data.
Several types of analysis were done to show the impact, number of publications, and the increase in research activities in the popular libraries. In this analysis, maybe some relevant papers are missed due to the search query and some other reasons. Figure 17 shows the number of publications in the given libraries.
Figure 18 shows the type of publications along with the number of papers in the given libraries.
Figure 19 shows the year and type of publication.
Figure 20 shows the number of papers in the given year.
Table 2 shows the details of the answers to the research questions with the method used along with the description.
4. Conclusion
With the current advancements in technology, the data are ever increasing with the increase in population, communications, IoT, actuators, sensors, and so on. This increase goes into different shapes of data whose decision becomes a challenging issue due to its growth of volume. Deep learning algorithms and multicriteria-based decision-making have effective applications in big data. Due to its effectiveness and potentiality, it is exploited in several domains such as computer science and information technology, agriculture, and business sector. The aim of the proposed study is to present a systematic literature in order to show the applications of deep learning algorithms and multicriteria decision approaches for the problems of big data. The research finds novel means to make the decision support system for the problems of big data using multiple criteria in integration with machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches. The presented study will provide better insights into the research community in the area domain and will help them in the designing of more robust, efficient, and effective multicriteria-based decision support system models, framework, technique, and integrated solutions of machine learning algorithms.
Data Availability
No data are available.
Conflicts of Interest
No conflicts of interest exist regarding this paper.