Mathematical Models For Decision Making With Multiple Perspectives

Mathematical Models for Decision Making with Multiple Perspectives

This book brings together, in a single volume, the fields of multicriteria decision making and multiobjective optimization that are traditionally covered separately. Both fields have in common the presence of multiple perspectives of looking at and evaluating decisions to be taken but they differ in the number of available alternatives. Multicriteria approaches deal with decision processes where a finite number of alternatives have to be evaluated while, in multiobjective optimization, this number is infinite and the space of alternatives continuous. This book is written for students of applied mathematics, engineering, and economics and management, with no assumed previous knowledge on the subject, as well as for practitioners in industry looking for techniques to support decision making. The mathematical formalism is very low, so that all materials are accessible to most readers. Nonetheless, a rich bibliography allows interested readers to access more technical literature. The textbook is organized in eleven chapters, each corresponding to a class of about two hours. A comprehensive set of examples is presented, allowing for a didactic approach when presenting the methodologies. Each chapter ends with exercises that are designed to develop problem-solving skills and to promote concepts retention.

Models and Methods in Multiple Criteria Decision Making

This volume is devoted to models and methods in multiple objectives decision making. The importance of the multiple dimensions of decision making was first recognised during the 1960s and since then progress has been made in that theoretical or application oriented contributions may now be categorized under two main headings:- Multiattribute Decision Making (MADM) which concerns the sorting, the ranking or the evaluation of objects of choice according to several criteria and Multiobjective Decision Making (MODM) which deals with the vector optimization in mathematical programming. The above are also presented in the context of various applications, namely banking, environment, health, manpower, media, portfolio and traffic control, resulting in a book for a wide variety of readers.

Multiple Perspectives for Decision Making