A Handbook on Multi-Attribute Decision-Making Methods

11PAPRIKA

11.1 Introduction

When it comes to real‐world decision‐making, those in charge often find themselves in a situation where more than one viable and feasible solution can be presented for the problem at hand. In addition, the stakeholders’ interests are often expressed through a set of confliction evolution criteria. The decision‐makers employ logically supported, mathematically oriented frameworks to evaluate and chose among alternatives. These frameworks are a guide for the decision‐makers to ensure a sound, smooth, and informed decision‐making process.

The set of evaluation criteria can be composed of both tangible and intangible variables. Note that in a case where the interest of the stakeholders are of intangible nature the performance of an alternative must be expressed with regard to an implicitly defined scale, which in turns employs the experience and expertise of the decision‐makers who are involved in the process of decision‐making. Often, in such cases, the decision‐makers would turn to ordinal values to express the performance of alternatives. Furthermore, even for the cases where multidimensional intangible variables are involved, the decision‐makers often find it difficult to justify and cope with the computational efforts required in the process of decision‐making where cardinal values are used directly. Instead, the decision‐makers often employ an ordinal‐oriented scales, which facilitates the assessment of the set of feasible alternatives. At the ...