Context-Related Scaling of Human Judgement in the Multiplicative AHP, SMART, and ELECTRE

Since decisions are invariably made within a given context, we model relative preferences as ratios of increments or decrements in an interval on the axis of desirability. Next, we sort the ratio magnitudes into a small number of categories, represented by numerical values on a geometric scale. We explain why the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the French collection of ELECTRE systems, typically based on pairwise -- comparison methods, are concerned with category judgement of ratio magnitudes, whereas the Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART) essentially uses the orders of magnitude of these ratios. This phenomenon, well-known in psycho-physics, provides a common basis for the analysis of the methods in question and for a cross-validation of their results. Throughout the paper, we illustrate the approach via a well-known case study, the choice of a location for a nuclear power plant

Fairness and Equity via Concepts of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

We briefly discuss principles of fairness and equity in order to incorporate them in a mathematical method for the allocation of benefits or costs (the output) in a distribution problem, on the basis of the effort, the strength or the needs (the input) of the respective parties. Usually, input and output are multi-dimensional, and proportionality seems to be the leading principle. Therefore we employ several algorithmic ideas of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis in order to support the solution of distribution problems, in particular the ideas underlying the Multiplicative AHP which was designed to process ratio information. We extend the method in order to cover the principles of progressivity, priority, and parity as well. Two examples, (a) the establishment of the member state contributions to the European Union, and (b) the allocation of seats in the European Parliament to the member states, show that the proposed method produces contributions and allocations with a higher degree of fairness and equity than the solutions adopted so far

De loopbaan van J.F. Benders

In dii artikel zal de loopbaan van prof.dr. J.F. Benders belichi warden naar aanlei ding van zijn pensionering als hoogleraar in de wiskunde aan de Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. Vanwege die aanleiding zal vooral aandacht besteed war den aan de activiteiten van Benders als hoogleraar, inaar een enkel zijsprongetje tnag natuurlijk best