New State of MCDM in the 21st Century

Abstract

This paper presents historical perspectives on the evolution of the field and discipline of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), followed by recognizing MCDM as a philosophy that inspired the development of theory, methodology, and practice of the art and science of MCDM. Except for a brief epilogue, the balance of the paper presents the following Ten Principles for the practice of MCDM: First Principle: MCDM as a harmonizing discipline in science, technology, society, and policy must be holistic; Second Principle: a common denominator bridges risk analysis and MCDM; Third Principle: models and state variables are central to MCDM; Fourth Principle: MCDM must account for risk of low probability with extreme consequences; Fifth Principle: MCDM must account for knowledge uncertainty and variability uncertainty; Sixth Principle: MCDM must account for emergent forced changes; Seventh Principle: multiple models are required to represent the multiple perspectives of a system; Eighth Principle: the imperativeness of selecting representative objectives and the time domain in MCDM; Ninth Principle: the MCDM process must be holistic, adaptive, incremental, and sustainable; and the Tenth Principle: Phantom System Models are required for the effective practice of MCDM, while building on and adhering to all nine principles. 2.1 Historical Perspectives During the past four or five decades, the consideration of multiple objectives (criteria) in modeling and decision making has grown by leaps and bounds. The 1980s, in particular, saw more emphasis on multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) and a shift from the dominance of single-objective modeling and optimization toward an emphasis on multiple objectives. Indeed, most (if not all) real-world Y.Y. Haimes L. R. Quarles Professor of Systems and Information Engineering, Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA e-mail: Haimes@virginia.edu Y. Shi et al. (eds.), New State of MCDM in the 21st Century, Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems 648, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-19695-9_2, c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 13