Objectives  The optimization of naval ship electronic information system design is a complicated issue involving multi-attribute decision making. In consideration of the attributes of alternative naval ship electronic information system designs, and aiming at the situation of incomplete weight information on the system design and decision makers, this paper proposes a novel method based on the measure of dominance index and group consistency for the optimization of naval ship electronic information system design with incomplete information.

  Methods  Firstly, the exchange criteria for incomplete information are established, and the absolute, strict and weak dominance relation between alternative system designs is defined. Secondly, the group dominance indexes are defined, and the computing method of ranking the alternative naval ship electronic information system designs with incomplete information is proposed. Finally, a case study of the optimization of naval ship electronic information system design is carried out.

  Results  By means of the group consistency calculation and iteration, the optimization results that meet the requirements of the consistency of decision making group members are formed, which verifies the rationality and effectiveness of the proposed method.

  Conclusions  The research findings provide a technical means for multi-attribute optimization of naval ship electronic information system design with incomplete information.