A Handbook on Multi-Attribute Decision-Making Methods

10Superiority and Inferiority Ranking (SIR)

10.1 Introduction

Multiattribute decision‐making (MADM) is the process of pursuing the selection of a solution from a set of feasible alternatives when the stakeholders’ interest can only be portrayed through a set of, often conflicting, evaluation criteria. As far as the sound decision‐making is concerned, often, the decision‐makers are faced with a diversified set of evaluation criteria, which is composed of tangible and intangible variables, expressed in terms of cardinal and ordinal values, respectively. Nevertheless, in light of MADM methods, the decision‐makers are presented with logically supported and mathematically expressed frameworks, which, eventually, enables them to protect the interests of the stakeholders in the process of decision‐making. Outranking‐oriented methods are one of the well‐known, pragmatic, branches of MADM methods, which attempt to overcome the challenges of real‐world decision‐making problems.

In essence, the outranking‐oriented MADM methods’ solution selection procedure is centered about a two‐stage process, namely, aggregation and exploitation (Figueira et al. 2013), through which the dominating and dominated alternatives become separated. The first stage is where outranking‐oriented MADM methods explore the inner relations among the paired alternatives in terms of whether an alternative is preferred to the comparing one, they are indifferent to one another, or they are incomparable with each other. ...