Multicriteria Decision Aid Methodology

Abstract

The start of the of Multicriteria Analysis’s history is set to the work of Pareto (1896) where the problem of the aggregation of criteria into a single criterion was examined. The monocriterion approach was at first adopted in decision analysis. This approach, according to Roy and Vanderpooten (1996), “consisted of defining a single criterion which should represent the effectiveness of the system under study”. The need for incorporating a variety of criteria in real world’s decision problems led to the decision-aid approach called Multicriteria Analysis (MA) that has been under development for the last 27 years. This approach proceeds to the generalization of the classic optimization paradigm in the field of operations research.