Dealing with inconsistent judgments in multiple criteria sorting models.

Sorting models consist in assigning alternatives evaluated on several criteria to ordered categories. To implement such models it is necessary to set the values of the preference parameters used in the model. Rather than fixing the values of these parameters directly, a usual approach is to infer these values from assignment examples provided by the decision maker (DM), i.e., alternatives for which (s)he specifies a required category. However, assignment examples provided by DMs can be inconsistent, i.e., may not match the sorting model. In such situations, it is necessary to support the DMs in the resolution of this inconsistency. In this paper, we extend algorithms from Mousseau et al.(2003) that calculate different ways to remove assignment examples so that the information can be represented in the sorting model. The extension concerns the possibility to relax (rather than to delete) assignment examples. These algorithms incorporate information about the confidence attached to each assignment example, hence providing inconsistency resolutions that the DMs are most likely to accept.Multicriteria decision aiding; Inconsistency analysis; Sorting problem;

Decision map for spatial decision making in urban planning

In this paper, we introduce the concept of decision map and illustrate the way this new concept can be used effectively to support participation in spatial decision making and in urban planning. First, we start by introducing our spatial decision process which is composed of five, non-necessary sequential, phases: problem identification and formulation, analysis, negotiation, concertation, and evaluation and choice. Negotiation and concertation are two main phases in spatial decision making but most available frameworks do not provide tools to support them effectively. The solution proposed here is based on the concept of decision map which is defined as an advanced version of conventional geographic maps which is enriched with preferential information and especially designed to clarify decision making. It looks like a set of homogenous spatial units; each one is characterised with a global, often ordinal, evaluation that represents an aggregation of several partial evaluations relative to different criteria. The decision map is also enriched with different spatial data exploration tools. The procedure of the construction of a decision map contains four main steps: definition of the problem (i.e. generation of criteria maps), generation of an intermediate map, inference of preferential parameters, and generation of a final decision map. The concept of decision map as defined here is a generic tool that may be applied in different domains. This paper focuses on the role of the decision map in supporting participation in spatial decision making and urban planning. Indeed, the decision map is an efficient communication tool in the sense that it permits to the different groups implied in the spatial decision process to ‘think visually’ and to communicate better between each other.ou

À l’intersection des expériences : mieux comprendre le développement identitaire des populations Noires LGBTQ+ du Québec

Ce mémoire vise à comprendre le développement identitaire des personnes Noires LGBTQ+ dans le contexte québécois. Cette population vit plusieurs formes de marginalisation structurelle et interpersonnelle en raison à leur positionnement social intersectionnel, ce qui peut avoir des impacts nocifs sur leur capacité de s’affirmer. En se basant sur l’analyse interprétative phénoménologique en tant que cadre théorique et méthodologique, six personnes Noires et LGBTQ+ résidant au Québec ont été convoquées à des entrevues individuelles semi-structurées virtuelles d’une durée d’entre 90 et 120 minutes. Elles ont été recrutées par le biais des affiches de recherche diffusées sur les réseaux sociaux (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), ainsi qu’aux organismes communautaires œuvrant auprès des populations Noires et LGBTQ+ au Québec. Elles ont explicité les contraintes au développement d’une identité cohérente ainsi que les facteurs ayant contribué à leur capacité de s’affirmer en tant que personnes Noires LGBTQ+ au Québec. Leurs réponses éclaircissent les facteurs clés qui ont un impact sur leur capacité d’affirmer pleinement leurs identités, autant positif que négatif. On découvre que le cloisonnement de leurs identités leur est imposé socialement et qu’un soutien intersectionnel peut leur permettre de réconcilier davantage leurs identités Noires et LGBTQ+. Les résultats de cette étude ont des implications importantes pour le travail social, démontrant que la profession peut agir comme vecteur de changement positif pour les personnes Noires LGBTQ+ du Québec. Notamment, on propose des mesures qui peuvent être mises en place pour favoriser le développement d’une identité cohésive pour cette population.This thesis aims to understand the identity development of Black LGBTQ+ people in Quebec. This population experiences many forms of structural and interpersonal marginalization due to their intersectional social positioning, which can have harmful impacts on their ability to assert themselves. Using phenomenological interpretive analysis as a theoretical and methodological framework, six Black LGBTQ+ individuals residing in Quebec were invited to participate in virtual semi-structured individual interviews lasting between 90 and 120 minutes. They were recruited through research posters posted on social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), as well as in the spaces of community organizations working with Black and LGBTQ+ populations in Quebec. Respondents explained the constraints to the development of a coherent identity as well as the factors that contributed to their ability to assert themselves as Black LGBTQ+ people in Quebec. Their responses shed light on the key factors that impact their ability to fully affirm their identities, both positive and negative. It is discovered that the compartmentalization of their identities is socially imposed on them, and that intersectional support can enable them to further reconcile their Black and LGBTQ+ identities. The results of this study have important implications for social work, demonstrating that the profession can act as a vehicle for positive change for Black LGBTQ+ people in Quebec. In particular, it highlights various measures that can be put in place to foster the development of a cohesive identity among this population

Le management des services d’identité judiciaire : Pratiques et perceptions des dirigeants policiers du Québec en matière de criminalistique

Travail dirigé présenté à la Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales en vue de l’obtention du grade de Maître ès sciences (M.Sc.) en Criminologie Option Criminalistique et InformationAu même titre que les enquêteurs, les juristes et les analystes en renseignement, les dirigeants de police font partie intégrante d’un ensemble d’acteurs non scientifiques directement concernés par l’exploitation de la science forensique. Ils possèdent notamment des pouvoirs et des responsabilités qui peuvent influencer la qualité et le rôle des techniciens en identité judiciaire au sein de l’organisation qu’ils dirigent. Toutefois, à une époque où la criminalistique est questionnée sur sa réelle contribution aux processus d’enquête ainsi que sur sa capacité à fournir des éléments de preuves valides, très peu d’études empiriques s’intéressent au point de vue des dirigeants de corps policiers malgré leur rôle démontré dans l’utilisation des traces matérielles. La présente recherche vise donc à comprendre la perception de la criminalistique par les gestionnaires policiers des services de police du Québec. Pour ce faire, 18 entretiens semi-directifs ont été réalisés avec des dirigeants de différents corps de police québécois disposant d’un service d’identité judiciaire. Les résultats soulignent entre autres que même si les cadres policiers possèdent un certain niveau de connaissances en criminalistique, ils conçoivent cette dernière comme une discipline presque exclusivement dédiée à l’identification des auteurs. Ils associent également le travail des techniciens en scène de crime à une tâche plutôt technique que scientifique. Alors que les managers policiers font face à plusieurs enjeux dans l’exercice de leurs fonctions, cette étude souligne l’intérêt d’une meilleure compréhension de la science forensique dans la sphère décisionnelle des corps policiers québécois et le bénéfice que représenterait une meilleure coordination entre les dirigeants policiers et la communauté forensique de la province.Along with investigators, lawyers, judges and intelligence analysts, police decision-makers represent an integral part of a group of non-scientific actors directly involved in the use of forensic science. They especially hold powers and responsibilities which can influence the quality and role of crime scene units within the organization they lead. However, at a time when forensic science faces several challenges about its contribution to crime investigations and its ability to provide accurate and relevant evidence, very few empirical studies have shown interested in the police managers' point of view. Therefore, the present study aims to understand how Quebec law enforcement decision-makers perceive the forensic science and how they manage the resources given to crime scene units. To do this, 18 semi-directive interviews were conducted with Quebec police managers who must deal with crime scene units within the organization they run. The results particularly raise that although police leaders have a certain level of knowledge in forensic science, they conceive the latter as an exclusively reactive discipline dedicated to the identification of offenders. They also tend to perceive the work of crime scene investigators as a technical and mechanical task rather than seeing it as a scientific process. In a context where police leaders must deal with many issues, this study highlights both the interest for a better understanding of forensic science in the decision-making sphere of Quebec law enforcement agencies and the benefit of a better coordination between police managers and the scientific and academic community in the province

Robust ordinal regression for value functions handling interacting criteria

International audienceWe present a new method called UTAGMS–INT for ranking a finite set of alternatives evaluated on multiple criteria. It belongs to the family of Robust Ordinal Regression (ROR) methods which build a set of preference models compatible with preference information elicited by the Decision Maker (DM). The preference model used by UTAGMS–INT is a general additive value function augmented by two types of components corresponding to ‘‘bonus’’ or ‘‘penalty’’ values for positively or negatively interacting pairs of criteria, respectively. When calculating value of a particular alternative, a bonus is added to the additive component of the value function if a given pair of criteria is in a positive synergy for performances of this alternative on the two criteria. Similarly, a penalty is subtracted from the additive component of the value function if a given pair of criteria is in a negative synergy for performances of the considered alternative on the two criteria. The preference information elicited by the DM is composed of pairwise comparisons of some reference alternatives, as well as of comparisons of some pairs of reference alternatives with respect to intensity of preference, either comprehensively or on a particular criterion. In UTAGMS–INT, ROR starts with identification of pairs of interacting criteria for given preference information by solving a mixed-integer linear program. Once the interacting pairs are validated by the DM, ROR continues calculations with the whole set of compatible value functions handling the interacting criteria, to get necessary and possible preference relations in the considered set of alternatives. A single representative value function can be calculated to attribute specific scores to alternatives. It also gives values to bonuses and penalties. UTAGMS–INT handles quite general interactions among criteria and provides an interesting alternative to the Choquet integral

Extended Forward Sensitivity Analysis for Uncertainty Quantification

Verification and validation (V&V) are playing more important roles to quantify uncertainties and realize high fidelity simulations in engineering system analyses, such as transients happened in a complex nuclear reactor system. Traditional V&V in the reactor system analysis focused more on the validation part or did not differentiate verification and validation. The traditional approach to uncertainty quantification is based on a 'black box' approach. The simulation tool is treated as an unknown signal generator, a distribution of inputs according to assumed probability density functions is sent in and the distribution of the outputs is measured and correlated back to the original input distribution. The 'black box' method mixes numerical errors with all other uncertainties. It is also not efficient to perform sensitivity analysis. Contrary to the 'black box' method, a more efficient sensitivity approach can take advantage of intimate knowledge of the simulation code. In these types of approaches equations for the propagation of uncertainty are constructed and the sensitivities are directly solved for as variables in the simulation. This paper presents the forward sensitivity analysis as a method to help uncertainty qualification. By including time step and potentially spatial step as special sensitivity parameters, the forward sensitivity method is extended as one method to quantify numerical errors. Note that by integrating local truncation errors over the whole system through the forward sensitivity analysis process, the generated time step and spatial step sensitivity information reflect global numerical errors. The discretization errors can be systematically compared against uncertainties due to other physical parameters. This extension makes the forward sensitivity method a much more powerful tool to help uncertainty qualification. By knowing the relative sensitivity of time and space steps with other interested physical parameters, the simulation is allowed to run at optimized time and space steps without affecting the confidence of the physical parameter sensitivity results. The time and space steps forward sensitivity analysis method can also replace the traditional time step and grid convergence study with much less computational cost. Several well defined benchmark problems with manufactured solutions are utilized to demonstrate the extended forward sensitivity analysis method. All the physical solutions, parameter sensitivity solutions, even the time step sensitivity in one case, have analytical forms, which allows the verification to be performed in the strictest sense

Effect of Compressibility on Hyperbolicity and Choke Flow Criterion of the Two-phase Two-fluid Model

The standard two-phase two-fluid model lacks hyperbolicity which results in oscillations in the numerical solutions. For the incompressible two-phase flows an exact correction term can be derived which when added to the momentum equations makes the model hyperbolic. No such straightforward approach exists for the similar compressible flows. In the current work, the effect of the compressibility on the characteristic equation is analyzed. It is shown that the hyperbolicity of the system depends only on the slip velocity and not on the phasic velocities, independently. Moreover, a slip Mach number is defined and a non-dimensional characteristic equation is derived. It is shown that for the small values of slip Mach number the effect of the compressibility on the hyperbolicity can be ignored. To verify the above analysis, the characteristic equation for the two-phase compressible flows is numerically solved and results compared with the values obtained with the analytical solution for incompressible flows. Numerical solution of the two-phase two-fluid model for the benchmark problem is used to further verify the abovementioned analysis. Furthermore, the eigenvalues of the characteristic equation are obtained as a power series expansion about the point where the slip Mach number is zero. These eigenvalues are used to develop a choking criterion for the compressible two-phase flows