Multi crteria decision making and its applications : a literature review

This paper presents current techniques used in Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and their applications. Two basic approaches for MCDM, namely Artificial Intelligence MCDM (AIMCDM) and Classical MCDM (CMCDM) are discussed and investigated. Recent articles from international journals related to MCDM are collected and analyzed to find which approach is more common than the other in MCDM. Also, which area these techniques are applied to. Those articles are appearing in journals for the year 2008 only. This paper provides evidence that currently, both AIMCDM and CMCDM are equally common in MCDM

Multiple Criteria Analysis of Discrete Alternatives with a Simple Preference Specification: Pairwise-outperformance based Approaches

Many methods have been developed for multiple criteria analysis and/or ranking of discrete alternatives. Most of them require complex specification of preferences. Therefore, they are not applicable for problems with numerous alternatives and/or criteria, where preference specification by the decision makers can hardly be done in a way acceptable for small problems, e.g., for pair-wise comparisons. In this paper we describe several new methods implemented for a real-life application dealing with muti-criteria analysis of future energy technologies. This analysis involves large numbers of both altrnatives and criteria. Moreover, the analysis was made by a large number of stakeholders without expeience in analytical methods. Therefore, a simple method for interactive preference specification was a condition for the analysis. The paper presents a number of new methods based on the developed out performance aggregations that take into account inter-alternative factors. Finally, a comparison of methods and experience of using them is discussed

A REVIEW OF APPLICATIONS OF MULTIPLE - CRITERIA DECISION-MAKING TECHNIQUES TO FISHERIES

Management of public resources, such as fisheries, is a complex task. Society, in general, has a number of goals that it hopes to achieve from the use of public resources. These include conservation, economic, and social objectives. However, these objectives often conflict, due to the varying opinions of the many stakeholders. It would appear that the techniques available in the field of multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) are well suited to the analysis and determination of fisheries management regimes. However, to date, relatively few publications exist using such MCDM methods compared to other applicational fields, such as forestry, agriculture, and finance. This paper reviews MCDM applied to fishery management by providing an overview of the research published to date. Conclusions are drawn regarding the success and applicability of these techniques to analyzing fisheries management problems.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Reference Point Method with Importance Weighted Partial Achievements, Journal of Telekommunications and Information Technology, 2008, nr 4

The reference point method (RPM) is based on the so-called augmented max-min aggregation where the worst individual achievement maximization process is additionally regularized with the average achievement. In order to avoid inconsistencies caused by the regularization, we replace it with the ordered weighted average (OWA) which combines all the individual achievements allocating the largest weight to the worst achievement, the second largest weight to the second worst achievement, and so on. Further following the concept of the weighted OWA (WOWA) we incorporate the importance weighting of several achievements into the RPM. Such a WOWA RPM approach uses importance weights to affect achievement importance by rescaling accordingly its measure within the distribution of achievements rather than by straightforward rescaling of achievement values. The recent progress in optimization methods for ordered averages allows us to implement the WOWA RPM quite effectively as extension of the original constraints and criteria with simple linear inequalities

Analyzing decision making in software design

A model is given for the analysis of rationality in design decision making. We define a formal means for answering the query, To what extent has a designer, on a particular occasion, using an explicit definition of 'good', decided rationally?A decision rationality classification scheme is proposed. This scheme incorporates non-compensatory decision analysis techniques (dominance and conjunctive cut-off) as well as compensatory techniques (simple and hierarchical additive weighting, linear assignment, concordance, and displaced ideal). A formal definition of design decision is derived by extending the Lehman, Stenning, Turski transformational model of the software design process. Their view of artifact specification mappings between linguistic systems is extended to include the concomitant effect of the mapping on resource expenditure.A formal specification for decision control knowledge is defined. This representation is the union of that knowledge required to support the various decision analysis techniques. Presumed to operationalize a designer's goals, the knowledge representation scheme includes five levels:1. Each objective expresses some relevant design concern for an artifact and/or resource characteristic.2. Each criterion expresses some relevant decomposition of a superior objective or criterion.3. Each attribute expresses the bottom-most decomposition for a superior criterion. Each attribute may have a weight indicating its relative contribution to its superior criterion.4. For each attribute, a value function expresses the designer's preference ordering over observed performance for an attribute.5. For each attribute, an observation channel describes an observer independent metric over some specification (either resource or artifact) rendered in some linguistic system and a procedure for application of that metric.Our model is applied to problems in Structured Design and conceptual data modeling. We argue that a comprehensive design history must include not only the transformations applied but also the rationale used in deciding their application. This rationale must include decision control knowledge governing both artifact (product) and resource (process) facets of design decision making. The principal contribution of this work is that the opacity of the decision intensive aspects of design are reduced thereby taking a necessary step for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of software development

A multiple criteria methodology for prioritizing and selecting portfolios of urban projects

This paper presents an integrated methodology supporting decisions in urban planning. In particular, it deals with the prioritization and the selection of a portfolio of projects related to buildings of some values for the cultural heritage in cities. More precisely, our methodology has been validated to the historical center of Naples, Italy. Each project is assessed on the basis of a set of both quantitative and qualitative criteria with the purpose to determine their level of priority for further selection. This step was performed through the application of the Electre Tri-nC method which is a multiple criteria outranking based method for ordinal classification (or sorting) problems and allows to assign a priority level to each project as an analytical "recommendation" tool. To identify the efficient portfolios and to support the selection of the most adequate set of projects to activate, a set of resources (namely budgetary constraints) as well as some logical constraints related to urban policy requirements have to be taken into consideration together with the priority of projects in a portfolio analysis model. The process has been conducted by means of the interaction between analysts, municipality representative and experts. The proposed methodology is generic enough to be applied to other territorial or urban planning problems. We strongly believe that, given the increasing interest of historical cities to restore their cultural heritage, the integrated multiple criteria decision aiding analytical tool proposed in this paper has significant potential to be used in the future

Fuzzy Multi-criteria Decision Making associated with Risk and Confidence Attributes

The multicriteria decision problems involve uncertainty, it is important to incorporate different types of uncertainty in any proposed solution. In this paper, we presented fuzzy MCDM approach based on risk and confidence analysis that we believe is effective in tackling complex, ill-defined and human-oriented decision problems