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Grey modeling technique is an important element of grey system theory, and academic articles applied to agricultural science research have been published since 1985, proving the broad applicability and effectiveness of the technique from different aspects and providing a new means to solve agricultural science problems. The analysis of the connotation and trend of the application of grey modeling technique in agricultural science research contributes to the enrichment of grey technique and the development of agricultural science in multiple dimensions.

Based on the relevant literature selected from China National Knowledge Infrastructure, the Web of Science, SpiScholar and other databases in the past 37 years (1985–2021), this paper firstly applied the bibliometric method to quantitatively visualize and systematically analyze the trend of publication, productive author, productive institution, and highly cited literature. Then, the literature is combed by the application of different grey modeling techniques in agricultural science research, and the literature research progress is systematically analyzed.

The results show that grey model technology has broad prospects in the field of agricultural science research. Agricultural universities and research institutes are the main research forces in the application of grey model technology in agricultural science research, and have certain inheritance. The application of grey model technology in agricultural science research has wide applicability and precise practicability.

By analyzing and summarizing the application trend of grey model technology in agricultural science research, the research hotspot, research frontier and valuable research directions of grey model technology in agricultural science research can be more clearly grasped.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the advances in grey system theory research and various application achievements in science and engineering. At the same time, it commemorates the 40th anniversary of the birth of grey system theory and the 10th anniversary of Grey Systems–Theory and Application.

Firstly, the innovations of theoretical research in grey system theory were summarized and some of the widely recognized new results are briefly described. By searching and combing the research results of grey system theory in China national knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) database and Web of Science by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), this paper shows the rapid development trend of grey system theory in the past 40 years, and the successful applications of grey system theory in the fields of social sciences, natural sciences and engineering technologies.

More than 227 thousands literature were found by input 10 phrases such as grey system, grey number and sequence operator etc. in CNKI database. After entering the new century, the number of grey system papers included in CNKI database is increasing rapidly. Since 2008, more than 10 thousands papers have been included per year and more than 15 thousands papers have been included per year since 2014. Grey system method and model are widely used in physics, chemistry, biology and other fields of natural science, as well as transportation, electric power, machinery and other fields of engineering technology, and a large number of valuable results have been achieved.

It can be seen that the grey system theory plays an important role in promoting China’s scientific and technological progress, innovation and development and high-level talent training from tens of thousands of literatures marked with important national science and technology projects and a large number of grey system literatures published by China’s double first-class universities and double first-class discipline construction universities.

Both innovations of theoretical research and practical application play important role in the growth of new theory. The innovations of theoretical research provide methods and tools for practical application, which is conducive to improve application efficiency and broaden application fields. A large number of practical applications needs have become the source of theoretical innovation and the solid background for the birth of theoretical innovation achievements.

Research on grey systems is becoming more sophisticated, and grey relational and prediction analyses are receiving close review worldwide. Particularly, the application of grey systems in marine economics is gaining importance. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and review literature on grey models, providing new directions in their application in the marine economy.

This paper organized seminal studies on grey systems published by Chinese core journal database – CNKI, Web of Science and Elsevier from 1982 to 2018. After searching the aforementioned database for the said duration, the authors used the CiteSpace visualization tools to analyze them.

The authors sorted the studies according to their countries/regions, institutions, keywords and categories using the CiteSpace tool; analyzed current research characteristics on grey models; and discussed their possible applications in marine businesses, economy, scientific research and education, marine environment and disasters. Finally, the authors pointed out the development trend of grey models.

Although researches are combining grey theory with fractals, neural networks, fuzzy theory and other methods, the applications, in terms of scope, have still not met the demand. With the increasingly in-depth research in marine economics and management, international marine economic research has entered a new period of development. Grey theory will certainly attract scholars’ attention, and its role in marine economy and management will gain considerable significance.

As the grey systems theory has been used over the time in different economic areas, in the following, a short literature review will be put forward, starting from the usage of these theory in the supply chain management, decision-making process, financial performance evaluation, credit risk, energy consumption, investment efficiency, etc. The purpose of this paper is to identify some key studies from all the economic areas in which the grey systems can be used in order to open and to bring to the researchers new domains in which they can manifest their interest and in which they can successfully use the methods offered by the grey systems theory.

Using the search engine offered by the Web of Science, a literature review has been performed for the economic grey systems applications developed over the time on both economic diagnosis and system’s forecasting. In addition, some hybrid grey systems theory – artificial intelligence techniques models have also been presented.

The grey systems theory has brought its contribution to numerous economic application from various fields such as: supply chain management, decision-making process, financial performance evaluation, credit risk, energy consumption, investment efficiency, firms’ bankruptcy, product development, consumer income, monetization ratio, etc.

The present paper identifies the some of the most representative examples in which the grey theory has been used, but, in the same time, there are a lot of studies that have not been mentioned here due to the lack of space.

Unlike other review papers written on the grey systems theory area, the present paper is only focusing on the economic applications in which this theory has been successfully used, bringing to the reader a general overview on this field and, in the same time, enabling new research perspectives.

As the grey systems theory has been widely used in the field of sustainable development (SD) research, in the following, a short literature overview will be put forward, starting from the usage of these theories in the economic development, social inclusion and environmental protection contributions to the evolving process of SD during 2011–2021. The purpose of this paper is to identify some key studies from all the SD areas in which the grey systems can be used in order to open and to bring the researchers to new domains in which they can reveal their interest and in which they can successfully use the methods offered by the grey systems theory.

Using the search engine offered by the Google Scholar and the Web of Science (WoS), a literature review has been performed for the grey systems applications on SD research on both grey relational analysis (GRA) and grey forecasting. In addition, some grey evaluation theories – clustering evaluation models and grey target decision models – have also been presented.

Many grey models are widely used in the field of SD. Compared with other methods such as grey prediction, grey evaluation and decision-making model, GRA technology is the most used method, and the research using this method is more than three times that of all other methods.

The present paper identifies some of the most representative examples in which the grey system theory (GST) has been used, but, in the same time, there are a lot of studies that have not been mentioned here due to the lack of space.

The present paper focuses on the SD applications in which GST has been successfully used, bringing to the reader a general overview on this field and, in the same time, enables new research perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the progress in grey system research during 2000-2015, so as to present some important new concepts, models, methods and a new framework of grey system theory.

The new thinking, new models and new methods of grey system theory and their applications are presented in this paper. It includes algorithm rules of grey numbers based on the “kernel” and the degree of greyness of grey numbers, the concept of general grey numbers, the synthesis axiom of degree of greyness of grey numbers and their operations; the general form of buffer operators of grey sequence operators; the four basic models of grey model GM(1,1), such as even GM, original difference GM, even difference GM, discrete GM and the suitable sequence type of each basic model, and suitable range of most used grey forecasting models; the similarity degree of grey incidences, the closeness degree of grey incidences and the three-dimensional absolute degree of grey incidence of grey incidence analysis models; the grey cluster model based on center-point and end-point mixed triangular whitenization functions; the multi-attribute intelligent grey target decision model, the two stages decision model with grey synthetic measure of grey decision models; grey game models, grey input-output models of grey combined models; and the problems of robust stability for grey stochastic time-delay systems of neutral type, distributed-delay type and neutral distributed-delay type of grey control, etc. And the new framework of grey system theory is given as well.

The problems which remain for further studying are discussed at the end of each section. The reader could know the general picture of research and developing trend of grey system theory from this paper.

A lot of successful practical applications of the new models to solve various problems have been found in many different areas of natural science, social science and engineering, including spaceflight, civil aviation, information, metallurgy, machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, electrical power, electronics, light industries, energy resources, transportation, medicine, health, agriculture, forestry, geography, hydrology, seismology, meteorology, environment protection, architecture, behavioral science, management science, law, education, military science, etc. These practical applications have brought forward definite and noticeable social and economic benefits. It demonstrates a wide range of applicability of grey system theory, especially in the situation where the available information is incomplete and the collected data are inaccurate.

The reader is given a general picture of grey systems theory as a new model system and a new framework for studying problems where partial information is known; especially for uncertain systems with few data points and poor information. The problems remaining for further studying are identified at the end of each section.

The Grey System Theory (GST) is an emerging area of research within artificial intelligence. Since its founding in 1982, it has seen a lot of multidisciplinary applications. In just a short period, it has garnered some considerable strengths. Based on the 1987–2021 data collected from the Web of Science (WoS), the current study reports the advancement of the GST.

Research papers utilizing the GST in the fields of economics and education were retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) platform using a set of predetermined keywords. In the final stage of the process, the papers that underwent analysis were manually chosen, with selection criteria based on the information presented in the titles and abstracts.

The study identifies prominent authors, institutions, publications and journals closely associated with the subject. In terms of authors, two major clusters are identified around Liu SF and Wang ZX, while the institution with the highest number of publications is Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Moreover, significant keywords, trends and research directions have been extracted and analyzed. Additionally, the study highlights the regions where the theory holds substantial influence.

The study is subject to certain limitations stemming from factors such as the language employed in the chosen literature, the papers included within the Web of Science (WoS) database, the designation of works categorized as “articles” in the database, the specific selection of keywords and keyword combinations, and the meticulous manual process employed for paper selection. While the manual selection process itself is not inherently limiting, it demands a greater investment of time and meticulous attention, contributing to the overall limitations of the study.

The significance of the study extends not only to scholars and practitioners but also to readers who observe the development of emerging scientific disciplines.

The analysis of trends revealed a growing emphasis on the application of GST in diverse domains, including supply chain management, manufacturing and economic development. Notably, the emergence of COVID-19 as a new research focal point among GST scholars is evident. The heightened interest in COVID-19 can be attributed to its global impact across various academic disciplines. However, it is improbable that this interest will persist in the long term, as the pandemic is gradually brought under control.

The purpose of this paper is to survey and express the advantages and disadvantages of the existing approaches for solving grey linear programming in decision-making problems.

After presenting the concepts of grey systems and grey numbers, this paper surveys existing approaches for solving grey linear programming problems and applications. Also, methods and approaches for solving grey linear programming are classified, and its advantages and disadvantages are expressed.

The progress of grey programming has been expressed from past to present. The main methods for solving the grey linear programming problem can be categorized as Best-Worst model, Confidence degree, Whitening parameters, Prediction model, Positioned solution, Genetic algorithm, Covered solution, Multi-objective, Simplex and dual theory methods. This survey investigates the developments of various solving grey programming methods and its applications.

Different methods for solving grey linear programming problems are presented, where each of them has disadvantages and advantages in providing results of grey linear programming problems. This study attempted to review papers published during 35 years (1985–2020) about grey linear programming solving and applications. The review also helps clarify the important advantages, disadvantages and distinctions between different approaches and algorithms such as weakness of solving linear programming with grey numbers in constraints, inappropriate results with the lower bound is greater than upper bound, out of feasible region solutions and so on.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the review of the existing literature attached to the grey economic system theory and applications and aims to offer a comprehensive picture of the contribution brought by the researchers to this particular field. Also, the paper underlines the main research areas within the grey economic theory and applications and serves as an informative summary kit for future research works and research directions.

For appreciating the scientific progress made since the grey systems theory has been initiated to the present, with an accent on the literature dedicated to the economic field, a bibliometrics analysis has been conducted. The Perish or Publish software was used for extracting the needed data from Google Scholar for the entire period since the appearance of grey systems to now-a-days. In addition, an ISI Web of Science (WoS) search has been performed for extracting the grey economic papers. As the main focus is on the economic subject area of the grey systems, only the papers related to this field have been selected.

The total number of grey economic paper from both Google Scholar and ISI WoS database, the number of authors, some citation metrics, H-index, authors’ provenience country, papers’ language, etc., have been presented and analysed. Also, a list with the most cited papers in the grey economic relational analysis, grey economic prediction models and grey economic incidence is putted forward.

Through the bibliometric analysis on grey economic papers written over time, a qualitative analysis was performed on this field in order to underline the main research direction, to analyse what has been done in this field and to determine which can be the next research directions that can emerge from here.

The paper succeeds in enlarging the view regarding the usage of grey systems theory in the economic field, offering a suitable analysis on the considered areas. Even though bibliometrics analysis have been conducted on the grey systems theory field, a grey economic bibliometric analysis has not been done yet, to the authors’ knowledge. Therefore, a synthesized of the existing literature attached to the grey economic system theory and applications is presented in order to offer a more comprehensive picture of the contribution brought by the researchers to this particular field.

The purpose of this paper is to present the scientific background from which grey systems theory came into being, the astonishing progress that grey systems theory has made in the world of learning and its wide‐ranging applications in the entire spectrum of science.

The grey uncertainty is compared with other kinds of uncertainty such as stochastic uncertainty, unascertainty, fuzzy and rough uncertainty.

The advances in grey systems theory and its various successful applications are introduced individually by algorithms of grey numbers and grey algebraic systems, grey dynamic models and grey predictions, grey optimization analysis for decision making, grey control models.

Many scientific theories require the unremitting efforts of several generations of people and have gone through hundreds of years before reaching maturity and perfection. Grey systems theory is still in its growth period. So, it is unavoidable that there exist immature and imperfect parts in the theory.

Grey systems theory is a new method for studying problems of uncertainty with few data points and poor information. This new theory studies small samples and systems with poor information, which have partial information known, partial information unknown. It describes adequately and monitors effectively systems' operations and evolutions through extracting valuable information from the little known information. Grey systems theory comes into being along with the development of modern systems science and uncertainty systems theories and methods. It is also a result of deepened perceptivity about uncertain systems.