Rough set and rule-based multicriteria decision aiding

Abstract

The aim of multicriteria decision aiding is to give the decision maker a recommendation concerning a set of objects evaluated from multiple points of view called criteria. Since a rational decision maker acts with respect to his/her value system, in order to recommend the most-preferred decision, one must identify decision maker's preferences. In this paper, we focus on preference discovery from data concerning some past decisions of the decision maker. We consider the preference model in the form of a set of "if..., then..." decision rules discovered from the data by inductive learning. To structure the data prior to induction of rules, we use the Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA). DRSA is a methodology for reasoning about data, which handles ordinal evaluations of objects on considered criteria and monotonic relationships between these evaluations and the decision. We review applications of DRSA to a large variety of multicriteria decision problems