European Working Group on Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding

Last updated
MCDA, European Working Group on Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding
EWG MCDA.png
Formation1975
Legal statusWorking group
Region
Europe
Parent organization
Association of European Operational Research Societies
Website www.cs.put.poznan.pl/ewgmcda/

The European Working Group on Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding (also, EURO Working Group on Multicriteria Decision Aiding, EWG on Multicriteria Aid for Decisions, or EWG-MCDA) is a working group whose objective is to promote original research in the field of multicriteria decision aiding at the European level. [1]

Contents

EWG-MCDA is one of the working groups of EURO, the Association of European Operational Research Societies, and has approximately 350 members from 38 countries. The Group was founded in 1975 [2] by Bernard Roy during the First European Conference on Operational Research (EURO I) held in Brussels, Belgium. [3]

The objectives of the EURO Working Group on MCDA are the following: [1] [3]

Since 1975, the Working Group has met invariably twice a year. The 50th Anniversary meeting of the Group was held in 1999 at the château of the Centre Culturel International de Cerisy-la-Salle, in France. At the 72nd Meeting of the Group held in 2010 at the Ecole Centrale Paris, Bernard Roy stepped down from his position of the Group Coordinator and became the Honorary Chairman. [4]

The European School of MCDA

Most of the researchers or authors distinguish two major streams of MCDA methods: [5]

The development of the European School of Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding is mainly attributed to the EURO Working Group on MCDA. [6] [7] The European School directs its study to methodologies where the personal preferences of decision makers have less influence on the alternative chosen.

The methods of the European School are the ELECTRE family methods (ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité) which stems from the pioneering work of Bernard Roy and whose development is strongly connected with the birth of the EWG on MCDA, [8] and the PROMETHEE (PReference ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations) method initiated by Professor Jean-Pierre Brans in the beginning of the eighties.

See also

Related Research Articles

Multiple-criteria decision analysis

Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) or multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is a sub-discipline of operations research that explicitly evaluates multiple conflicting criteria in decision making. Conflicting criteria are typical in evaluating options: cost or price is usually one of the main criteria, and some measure of quality is typically another criterion, easily in conflict with the cost. In purchasing a car, cost, comfort, safety, and fuel economy may be some of the main criteria we consider – it is unusual that the cheapest car is the most comfortable and the safest one. In portfolio management, managers are interested in getting high returns while simultaneously reducing risks; however, the stocks that have the potential of bringing high returns typically carry high risk of losing money. In a service industry, customer satisfaction and the cost of providing service are fundamental conflicting criteria.

ELECTRE is a family of multi-criteria decision analysis methods that originated in Europe in the mid-1960s. The acronym ELECTRE stands for: ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité.

The superiority and inferiority ranking method is a multi-criteria decision making model (MCDA) which can handle real data and provides six different preference structures for the system user. MCDM is a sub-discipline of operations research that explicitly evaluates multiple conflicting criteria in decision making, both in daily life and in settings such as business, government and medicine.

Bernard Roy was an emeritus professor at the Université Paris-Dauphine. In 1974 he founded the "Laboratoire d'Analyse et de Modélisation des Systèmes pour l'Aide à la Décision" (Lamsade). He was President of Association of European Operational Research Societies from 1985 to 1986. In 1992 he was awarded the EURO Gold Medal, the highest distinction within Operations Research in Europe. In 2015 he received the EURO Distinguished Service Award.

Decision-making software is software for computer applications that help individuals and organisations make choices and take decisions, typically by ranking, prioritizing or choosing from a number of options.

In decision theory, the weighted sum model (WSM), also called weighted linear combination (WLC) or simple additive weighting (SAW), is the best known and simplest multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) / multi-criteria decision making method for evaluating a number of alternatives in terms of a number of decision criteria.

The decision-making paradox is a phenomenon related to decision-making and the quest for determining reliable decision-making methods. It was first described in 1989, and has been recognized in the related literature as a fundamental paradox in multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) and decision analysis since then.

In decision-making, a rank reversal is a change in the rank ordering of the preferability of alternative possible decisions when, for example, the method of choosing changes or the set of other available alternatives changes. The issue of rank reversals lies at the heart of many debates in decision-making and multi-criteria decision-making, in particular.

The Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment of Evaluations and its descriptive complement geometrical analysis for interactive aid are better known as the Promethee and Gaia methods.

Proaftn is a fuzzy classification method that belongs to the class of supervised learning algorithms. The acronym Proaftn stands for:, which means in English: Fuzzy Assignment Procedure for Nominal Sorting.

In multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA), multicriteria classification involves problems where a finite set of alternative actions should be assigned into a predefined set of preferentially ordered categories (classes). For example, credit analysts classify loan applications into risk categories, customers rate products and classify them into attractiveness groups, candidates for a job position are evaluated and their applications are approved or rejected, technical systems are prioritized for inspection on the basis of their failure risk, etc.

DecideIT is a decision-making software that is based on multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) and the multi-attribute value theory (MAVT). It supports both the modelling and evaluation of value trees for multi-attribute decision problems as well as decision trees for evaluating decisions under risk.

The VIKOR method is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) or multi-criteria decision analysis method. It was originally developed by Serafim Opricovic to solve decision problems with conflicting and noncommensurable criteria, assuming that compromise is acceptable for conflict resolution, the decision maker wants a solution that is the closest to the ideal, and the alternatives are evaluated according to all established criteria. VIKOR ranks alternatives and determines the solution named compromise that is the closest to the ideal.

D-Sight is a company that specializes in decision support software and associated services in the domains of project prioritization, supplier selection and collaborative decision-making. It was founded in 2010 as a spin-off from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Their headquarters are located in Brussels, Belgium.

Association of European Operational Research Societies

The Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) is a regional grouping within the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS) whose aim is to promote Operational Research throughout Europe. It was established in 1975.

Measuring attractiveness through a categorical-based evaluation technique is the goal of the MACBETH approach that was designed by Carlos António Bana e Costa, from the University of Lisbon, in cooperation with Professor Jean-Claude Vansnick and Dr. Jean-Marie De Corte, from the Université de Mons.

Stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) is a multiple-criteria decision analysis method for problems with missing or incomplete information.

Valerie "Val" Belton is a British professor of management science and operations research at the University of Strathclyde.

Value tree analysis

Value tree analysis is a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) implement by which the decision-making attributes for each choice to come out with a preference for the decision makes are weighted. Usually, choices' attribute-specific values are aggregated into a complete method. Decision analysts (DAs) distinguished two types of utility. The preferences of value are made among alternatives when there is no uncertainty. Risk preferences solves the attitude of DM to risk taking under uncertainty. This learning package focuses on deterministic choices, namely value theory, and in particular a decision analysis tool called a value tree.

The Hellenic Operational Research Society (HELORS) is the official non-profit society for the scientific field of Operations Research in Greece. The society is a member of the European umbrella organization, the Association of European Operational Research Societies, and of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies.

References

  1. 1 2 http://www.cs.put.poznan.pl/ewgmcda - EWG-MCDA webpage
  2. Ballestero, E. and Romero, C. (1998). Decision Making and its Applications to Economic Problems, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston. p. 9. ISBN   0-7923-8238-2
  3. 1 2 http://www.euro-online.org - EURO, Association of European Operational Research Societies
  4. http://www.cs.put.poznan.pl/ewgmcda/newsletter/Fall10.pdf - EWG-MCDA Newsletter, Series 3, Number 22, Fall 2010
  5. C. Zopounidis (2001). Financial applications of multicriteria analysis. In C. Floudas and P. Pardalos, editors, Encyclopedia of Optimization, volume II, pages 114-125. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. ISBN   0-7923-7027-9
  6. B. Roy and D. Vanderpooten (1996). An overview on "The European School of MCDA: Emergence, Basic Features and Current Works". Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, 5(1):22-37. ISSN 0377-2217, doi : 10.1016/S0377-2217(96)00379-7
  7. M. Doumpos and C. Zopounidis (2002). Multicriteria Decision Aid Classification Methods, volume 73 of Applied Optimization. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. ISBN   1-4020-0805-8
  8. J. Figueira, V. Mousseau and B. Roy (2005). ELECTRE Methods, In Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: State of the Art Surveys, J. Figueira, S. Greco, M. Ehrgott (Editors), Int. Series in Operations Research and Management Science, Vol. 78, 133-172, Springer, New York. ISBN   0-387-23067-X