Applications in Practical Decision-Making Methods: PROMETHEE and TOPSIS

Abstract

The PROMETHEE is a common name for a group of multi-criteria optimization methods or optimization methodology which is heavily based on pairwise comparison methods. Based on mathematics and sociology, the PROMETHEE method was developed at the beginning of the 1980s and has been extensively studied and refined since then. It has particular application in decision-making, and is used around the world in a wide variety of decision scenarios, in fields such as business, governmental institutions, transportation, health-care and education. Rather than pointing out an “optimal” decision, the PROMETHEE method helps decision-makers find the alternative that best suits their goal and their understanding of the problem. It provides a comprehensive and rational framework for structuring a decision problem, identifying and quantifying its conflicts and synergies, clusters of actions, and highlight the main alternatives and the structured reasoning behind. The TOPSIS is a multi-criteria decision method, based on the concept that the optimal alternative should have the shortest “distance” from the positive ideal solution (PIS) and the longest “distance” from the negative ideal solution (NIS). The most important part of TOPSIS model is based on pairwise comparisons.