Multi-criteria Decision Analysis - Foundations, Concepts, Definitions

Foundations, Concepts, Definitions

MCDM or MCDA are well-known acronyms for multiple criteria decision making and multiple criteria decision analysis. Stanley Zionts wrote an article in 1979 titled: "MCDM – If not a Roman Numeral, then What?"

MCDM is concerned with structuring and solving decision and planning problems involving multiple criteria. The purpose is to support decision makers facing such problems. Typically, there does not exist a unique optimal solution for such problems and it is necessary to use decision maker’s preferences to differentiate between solutions.

"Solving" can be interpreted in different ways. It could correspond to choosing the "best" alternative from a set of available alternatives (where "best" can be interpreted as "the most preferred alternative" of a decision maker). Another interpretation of "solving" could be choosing a small set of good alternatives, or grouping alternatives into different preference sets. An extreme interpretation could be to find all "efficient" or "nondominated" alternatives (which we will define shortly).

The difficulty of the problem originates from the presence of more than one criterion. There is no longer a unique optimal solution to an MCDM problem that can be obtained without incorporating preference information. The concept of an optimal solution is often replaced by the set of nondominated solutions. A nondominated solution has the property that it is not possible to move away from it to any other solution without sacrificing in at least one criterion. Therefore, it makes sense for the decision maker to choose a solution from the nondominated set. Otherwise, he could do better in terms of some or all of the criteria, and not do worse in any of them. Generally, however, the set of nondominated solutions is too large to be presented to the decision maker for his final choice. Hence we need tools that help the decision maker focus on his preferred solutions (or alternatives). Normally one has to "tradeoff" certain criteria for others.

MCDM has been an active area of research since the 1970s. There are several MCDM-related organizations including the International Society on Multi-criteria Decision Making, Euro Working Group on MCDA, and INFORMS Section on MCDM. For a history see: Köksalan, Wallenius and Zionts (2011). Also see A Brief History prepared by Steuer and Zionts.

MCDM draws upon knowledge in many fields including:

• Mathematics
• Behavioral Decision Theory
• Economics
• Computer Technology
• Software Engineering
• Information Systems