Multicriteria Decision Aid Methods Research Articles

Application of backcasting method and multi-criteria decision making in the development of scenarios for recycling concepts and selection of the best scenario

The EU member states are expected to achieve an increase in recycling and preparing for the re-use of municipal waste to 70% by the year 2030, in recycling and preparing for the re-use of packaging waste to 80% by 2030, etc. This explains the government's necessity for a tool that will set the goals to be achieved as its starting point and enable a retrospective approach in developing measures to achieve these goals. This is significantly different from the forecasting approach. This paper aims to demonstrate the potential use of combination of the two methods for decision making for selection of the best scenario for achieving solid waste goals: the backcasting method and the specific multi-criteria decision aid method, in the process of development and ranking of scenarios for solid waste management and more specifically in recycling options, tested on a pilot case in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The CAR Method for Using Preference Strength in Multi-criteria Decision Making

Multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA) methods have been around for quite some time. However, the elicitation of preference information in MCDA processes, and in particular the lack of practical means supporting it, is still a significant problem in real-life applications of MCDA. There is obviously a need for methods that neither require formal decision analysis knowledge, nor are too cognitively demanding by forcing people to express unrealistic precision or to state more than they are able to. We suggest a method, the CAR method, which is more accessible than our earlier approaches in the field while trying to balance between the need for simplicity and the requirement of accuracy. CAR takes primarily ordinal knowledge into account, but, still recognizing that there is sometimes a quite substantial information loss involved in ordinality, we have conservatively extended a pure ordinal scale approach with the possibility to supply more information. Thus, the main idea here is not to suggest a method or tool with a very large or complex expressibility, but rather to investigate one that should be sufficient in most situations, and in particular better, at least in some respects, than some hitherto popular ones from the SMART family as well as AHP, which we demonstrate in a set of simulation studies as well as a large end-user study.

Analysis of the operational performance of brazilian airport terminals: A multicriteria approach with De Borda-AHP integration

ObjectiveThis study proposes a multicriteria approach for the comparative analysis of the operational performance of Brazilian airport terminals. MethodologyTwo multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) methods – De Borda and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) - were applied in an integrated manner to the database of the performance report from the Brazilian Department of Civil Aviation (Secretaria de Aviação Civil – SAC/PR), composed of evaluations issued by 18,062 respondents regarding 15 airport terminals, 12 of which are analyzed in this study considering 8 evaluation criteria. On the first level, the AHP method was used to assign weights to the criteria. On the second level, the De Borda method was applied to rank the alternatives. ResultsThe proposed method resulted in a final ranking of alternatives that was significantly different from the one presented in the SAC/PR report. Contribution to knowledgeThe employment of the integrated De Borda-AHP method is not common and ensured a greater approximation with the overall user satisfaction indicator, showing that it is the more appropriate methodological option when compared with the arithmetic mean commonly used in public reports. Contribution to societyBased on the obtained ranking, air transport users will be able to have a more realistic comparative picture of the main airport terminals analyzed. Contribution to the management of the airport systemThis work contributes to the strategic planning and allocation of investments seeking to adapt and expand the sector, and also to the continuous improvement of the service levels provided at airports.

Guidelines to design models assessing agricultural sustainability, based upon feedbacks from the DEXi decision support system

New agricultural systems are required to satisfy societal expectations such as higher quantity and quality of agricultural products, reducing environmental impacts, and more jobs. However, identifying and implementing more suitable agricultural systems is difficult due to conflicting objectives and to the wide diversity of scientific disciplines required to solve agricultural issues. Therefore, designing models to assess the sustainability of agricultural systems requires multi-criteria decision aid methods. The French agronomist community has recently developed 11 hierarchical and qualitative models to assess sustainability using the DEXi decision aid software. Here, we give guidelines to help designers to build their own specific models. First, we present the principles and applications of the DEXi software. Then, we provide guidance on the following steps of model designing: (1) initial analysis and planning of the design process, (2) selection and hierarchy of sustainability criteria, (3) indicator selection and building, (4) parameterization, (5) evaluation, and (6) model dissemination and uses. We then discuss advantages and drawbacks of this kind of modeling formalism, the role of a participatory approach, and the main properties to consider during the design process.

Official tourist destination websites: Hierarchical analysis and assessment with ELECTRE-III-H

Official websites are important communication tools for tourist destinations. However, it is difficult to make a systematic and complete evaluation of their quality due to their diversity of functionalities, which makes them complex to analyse. This paper proposes the complementation of the WQI assessment system for Destination Marketing Organizations with the Multi-criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) method ELECTRE. WQI assessment system contains several indicators (123) that can be organised in a hierarchical structure, which makes suitable the application of ELECTRE-III-H. ELECTRE-III-H method is able to reveal relevant preference relations among the websites with regard to different aspects (e.g., usability, architecture or persuasiveness), being a powerful tool to detect the strong and weak points of each website. The study is illustrated with the results of a pilot test that evaluates 10 touristic destination websites.

Use of DEA and PROMETHEE II to Assess the Performance of Older Drivers

In recent years, there has been an increasing concern regarding the safety and mobility of elderly drivers. This study aims to evaluate the overall performance and ranking of a sample of 55 drivers, aged 70 and older, based on data from an assessment battery and a fixed-based driving simulator, by using the concept of composite indicators and multi criteria approach. To do so, drivers completed tests of an assessment battery of psychological and physical aspects as well as knowledge of road signs. Moreover, they took part in a driving simulator test in which scenarios that are known to be difficult for older drivers were included.Composite indicators (CIs) are becoming increasingly recognized as a useful tool for performance evaluation, benchmarking and policy analysis by summarizing complex and multidimensional issues. One of the essential steps in the construction of composite indicators is aggregation and assignment of weights to each sub-indicator which directly affect the quality and reliability of the calculated CIs. In this regard, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and Multi Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) have been acknowledged as two popular methods for weighting and aggregation and problem solving: ranking, sorting and choosing.In this case study, on the one hand, we apply a DEA model to calculate the optimal performance index score for each driver. On the other hand, we apply a MCDA method to enrich the analysis of this problem by considering preferential information from Decision Makers (DM). This also results in a ranking of drivers in terms of driving performance.The results of this study show that the best and the worst drivers identified by the two models are similar. These observations point out the interest of using PROMETHEE II (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations) and DEA. The high correlation between these results confirms the robustness of our answers.

Use of Multi-criteria Decision Aid Methods for Selection of the Best Alternative for the Highway Tunnel Doors

The paper describes the application of the multicriteria optimization in selecting the best alternative when choosing a tunnel security door. The paper presents an overview of the requirements of internationally recognized and other important standards and recommendations aimed at increasing the level of safety in tunnels, as well as an example of the multicriteria analysis for the selection of doors. The applied alternatives multicriteria ranking methods are VIKOR, PVIKOR and PROMETHEE, whose results are compared in order to propose and adopt a final solution. Paper also assesses the possibilities and profitability of production of such doors in BiH. The application of these methods shows that multicriteria optimization can significantly facilitate and accelerate the decision-making process.

Nonlinear programming applied to the reduction of inconsistency in the AHP method

Analytic Hierarchy Process is one of the most known multicriteria decision aid methods. Nevertheless, as it relies on decision makers (DM) pairwise comparisons, a problem may occur if some comparisons are not well done. This issue, known as inconsistency, appears when an inconsistency threshold is violated. One way to deal with inconsistency is to redo all judgments, as many times as needed, in order to reach acceptable levels. This work proposes a nonlinear programming model that reduces inconsistency to zero or near zero, without needing to redo all judgments. The reduction is achieved by adjusting the original judgments in a minimum way, keeping the DM’s decisions within a tolerable range. Only discrete values are generated, so the solution respects the limits of the Saaty scale (1–9). To illustrate the efficiency of the nonlinear model, a comparison between the proposed model and other models taken from recent literature was made. The results show that the proposed model performed better, since the original judgments were changed in a minimum way, also the inconsistency was completely removed. Alternatively, if some inconsistency is allowed more original judgments can be preserved.

Emprego de métodos de apoio multicritério à decisão para seleção de uma escola de idiomas

Atualmente, o interesse das organizações por profissionais que dominam mais de um idioma tem sido cada vez maior. Neste cenário, a escolha de uma escola de idiomas tem sido um dos problemas decisórios mais comuns, muitas vezes realizada em função de informações boca-a-boca, ações de marketing das escolas e experimentações sem critérios. Desejando contribuir para este problema, este artigo apresenta um estudo no qual foram empregados dois métodos de apoio à tomada de decisão (AHP e Média Ponderada) com o objetivo de escolher uma escola de idiomas. Para tanto, foram considerados o grau de importância de critérios relativos ao problema e o grau de satisfação de estudantes de graduação e pós-graduação em relação às escolas de idiomas que frequentavam. A escola de idiomas mais bem ordenada foi a mesma em ambos os métodos de AMD, embora algumas escolas tenham obtido posições diferentes. Foi constatado que a análise com o método AHP é mais rica e elaborada do que com a Média Ponderada. Porém, a grande quantidade de julgamentos paritários necessária ao estudo demandou atenção e significativo esforço cognitivo do decisor, além de maior tempo para realização das análises - aspectos que podem favorecer a preferência pelo uso da Média Ponderada em estudos similares.

Biogas plants site selection integrating Multicriteria Decision Aid methods and GIS techniques: A case study in a Portuguese region

This work addresses the problem of determining the most suitable sites for locating biogas plants using dairy manure as feedstock, specifically in the Entre-Douro-e-Minho Region in Portugal. A Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support System is developed to tackle this complex multicriteria decision-making problem, involving constraints and many environmental, economic, safety, and social factors. The approach followed combines the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to manage and process spatial information with the flexibility of Multicriteria Decision Aid (MCDA) to assess factual information (e.g. soil type, slope, infrastructures) with more subjective information (e.g. expert opinion). The MCDA method used is ELECTRE TRI, an outranking-type method that yields a classification of the possible alternatives. The results of the performed analysis show that the use of ELECTRE TRI is suitable to address real-world problems of land suitability, leading towards a flexible and integrated assessment.

Pollution And Environmental Indicators Using A Multicriteria Analysis

Pollution and environmental factors are a core topic because they influence in air quality of the different areas of a city. This is why in this article we propose to apply a multicriteria decision aid method (the Promethee) to establish a ranking among twenty one districts of Madrid city. To develop this ranking we use objective and subjective criteria that contain information about pollution and environmental indicators in these districts. The results show that some districts are the worse and the best regardless the used criteria.

Exergy–economic evaluation of heat recovery device in mechanical ventilation system

The paper presents new approach in evaluation of heat recovery devices in mechanical ventilation system. The evaluation is based on exergy balance equation and economic analysis, what requires application of one of multicriteria decision aid methods—weighted sum method. The proposed set of evaluation criteria consists of: driving exergy, simple payback time and investment cost. The proposed method is applied to compare the four variants of heat recovery device in inlet-exhaust mechanical ventilation system of the capacity of 10,000m3/h installed in residential part of hotel. The analysis is performed for four preference models. The results of the multicriteria evaluation indicate that counter flow plate heat exchanger and the rotating heat/mass regenerator are better solutions comparing with water loop heat exchanger and heat pipe heat exchanger. Counter flow plate heat exchanger is the most compromise solution for the two preference models PREF_00 (based on statistic approach) and PREF_03 (investment cost priority preference model). Rotating heat/mass regenerator is the most compromise solution for the preference model 01 (driving exergy priority preference model). The proposed method can be helpful in the choice of the most compromise solution of the heat recovery device in pre-design phase.

Development of a Web-based Multi-criteria Spatial Decision Support System for the assessment of environmental sustainability of dairy farms

The assessment of the environmental sustainability of agricultural infrastructures involves the use of multiple evaluation criteria and the analysis of geographical information. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a computer system capable of assembling, storing, analysing, and displaying geographically referenced information. However, the GIS technology still suffers from several shortcomings due in large part to a lack of capable analytical capacity of supporting spatial decision problems. The most common solution for GIS to evolve into an effective tool for decision support is to couple them with operational research tools and in particular Multicriteria Decision Aid (MCDA). Due to the technological advances in the field of information systems, there is a great need to research how to integrate GIS, MCDA, the Internet, modeling and databases aiming at creating Web Multicriteria Spatial Decision Support Systems (Web MC-SDSSs). A Web MC-SDSS methodological framework is proposed for a fully integrated system of GIS and a specific MCDA method – ELECTRE TRI, through the construction of a Macro written in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in ArcGIS software. This macro interacts with a Web Algorithm Server for computing MCDA results. The developed Web MC-SDSS, named ELECTRE TRI in ArcGIS, is applied on a case study analysing the environmental sustainability of dairy farms in the Entre-Douro-e-Minho (EDM) Region.

Critical Review of Multi-criteria Decision Aid Methods in Conceptual Design Phases: Application to the Development of a Solar Collector Structure

At each stage of the product development process, the designers are facing an important task which consists of decision making. Two cases are observed: the problem of concept selection in conceptual design phases and, the problem of pre-dimensioning once concept choices are made. Making decisions in conceptual design phases on a sound basis is one of the most difficult challenges in engineering design, especially when innovative concepts are introduced. On the one hand, designers deal with imprecise data about design alternatives. On the other hand, design objectives and requirements are usually not clear in these phases. The greatest opportunities to reduce product life cycle costs usually occur during the first conceptual design phases. The need for reliable multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA) methods is thus greatest at early conceptual design phases. Various MCDA methods are proposed in the literature. The main criticism of these methods is that they usually yield different results for the same problem [22,23,25]. In this work, an analysis of six MCDA methods (weighed sum, weighted product, Kim & Lin, compromise programming, TOPSIS, and ELECTRE I) was conducted. Our analysis was performed via an industrial case of solar collector structure development. The objective is to define the most appropriate MCDA methods in term of three criteria: (i) the consistency of the results, (ii) the ease of understanding and, (iii) the adaptation of the decision type. The results show that TOPSIS is the most consistent MCDA method in our case.

Application of AHP Method for Multi-criteria Evaluation of Variants of the Integration of Urban Public Transport

This article presents the idea of travel demand management and basic concepts of urban public transport integration. The process of striving for integration of urban transport requires detailed analysis of tools to assess the activities. The cities often offer different variants of the integration, but it is difficult to determine which option is the best. This choice can be easier by making an assessment of variants of the integrated system of urban public transport (ISUPT) by using multi-criteria decision aid methods (MCDA). The aim of the article is to present the main elements of the methodology of MCDA, and then the possibility of applying it to assess variants of ISUPT. To assess variants of ISUPT, one of the MCDA methods – the AHP ranking method was used. Special attention was paid to the complexity of the considered problem, where it is necessary to take into account many aspects of it, such as: economic, technical, environmental and social. In order to show the practical application of the proposed methodology, the example of Cracow was used.

RFID synchronisation for ambient services in a holonic and isoarchic control model

RFID technologies will increase the capabilities to interact, to react and to customise control systems with innovative possibilities. New control approaches should be proposed based on the use of emerging technologies that will allow their operability in manufacturing systems. A model for ambient control production systems is proposed, based on a set of holonic entities interacting through a set of entities that offer ambient services. After describing the PROSIS (Product, Resource, Order, Simulation Isoarchic System) model, some of the ambient services and the way these services could be provided are presented. PROSIS is based on the holonic paradigm, an isoarchic structure and a multicriteria decision aid method. RFID technologies are used to synchronise the real-world entities (products, resources etc.) and their corresponding entities in the informational world according to the PROSIS model. Then, the impact of the proposed approach in terms of performance evaluation is studied.

An Endogenous Project Performance Evaluation Approach Based on Random Forests and IN-PROMETHEE II Methods

In order to identify the best or poorest alternative project by an overall ranking result in the scenario of assessing multiple infrastructure projects, multicriteria decision aid methods need to be incorporated into evaluating project performance. Most previous methods for assessing infrastructure project performance may not be applicable to frequent cases with numerous evaluation criteria but inadequate observation data. This paper proposed an objective performance evaluation approach from annual field-survey data through Random Forests and IN-PROMETHEE II methods together. Random Forests method is employed to predict performance values under selected criteria as the single-valued performance scores. IN-PROMETHEE II method is further developed to quantify the preference index among different projects under each criterion. By calculating a weighted average of single-criterion preference index, the multicriteria preference index can be obtained to determine the ultimate ranking of alternative projects. A comprehensive empirical study reveals that this approach is able to successfully avoid subjective bias. It is helpful in tracing decisive factors of project performance for practical projects in multicriteria cases. The analysis results have proved that the proposed method can be widely used in performance evaluation of complicated infrastructure projects.

Augmenting Ordinal Methods of Attribute Weight Approximation

Multicriteria decision aid (MCDA) methods have been around for quite some time. However, the elicitation of preference information in MCDA processes and the lack of supporting practical means are problematic in real-life applications. Various proposals have been made for how to eliminate some of the obstacles and methods for introducing so-called surrogate weights have proliferated in the form of ordinal ranking methods for criteria weights. Considering the decision quality, one main problem is that the input information allowed in ordinal methods is sometimes too restricted. At the same time, decision makers often possess more background information, for example, regarding the relative strengths of the criteria, and might want to use that. We propose combined methods for facilitating the elicitation process and show how this provides a way to use partial information from the strength of preference judgment over weights in assessing weights for multiattribute utility functions.

Special issue on multi-criteria decision aid methods for modelling and solving business and management problems

Special issue on multi-criteria decision aid methods for modelling and solving business and management problems

Multi-criteria decision aid for the selection of open trenching technology for modernisation of municipal infrastructure systems

The paper deals with the possibility of application of multi-criteria decision aid methods to selecting best options for municipal infrastructure systems modernisation projects. The subjects of analysis are different open trenching sewage system construction technologies. The aim of the work was to build a mathematical model of the decision problem and apply an existing multi-criteria decision aid method to obtain an objective ranking of all decision options. The method has been applied to a real-life problem in Poland. The results obtained from the analysis demonstrate effectiveness of the adopted method. The presented method can be used by individual designers and managers to decide on selection of the most appropriate technology for modernisation of municipal infrastructure systems.