Organizations need to solve complex problems efficiently, and in most cases this requires development, comprehensive analysis, and maintenance of models. Policy makers and almost all industrial companies, research, educational and other organizations are faced with problems of finding a compromise between conflicting goals, such as costs versus performance and reliability of products and technologies, and the time to bring them to the market, life-time costs versus environmental impacts, or economic growth versus intergeneration fairness of a~pension system, spatial and temporal allocation of costs of climate change mitigation versus ex ante and/or ex post risk management. These problems can be solved only if data, knowledge and information are not only available, but can be efficiently analyzed and shared, which typically implies use of models.

Making rational decisions for any complex problem requires various analyses of tradeoffs between conflicting goals (objectives, outcomes) that are used for measuring the results of applying various decisions in a wide range of application domains. A typical decision problem has an infinite number of solutions, and users are interested in analyzing trade-offs between those that correspond to their preferences (assumptions, trade-offs), which is often called a preferential structure of the user.

NEEDS (New Energy Externalities Developments for Sustainability of the EU 6th Framework Integrated Program of the Sustainable Energy Systems Program)

IIASA was a leading center of Multi-Criteria Model Analysis (MCMA) methods in the 1980s. In the last two decades we have maintained the expertise and developed modular tools with a very small amount of resources for this field. This is now a basis for our participation in the EU funded NEEDS project 2005-2008. We lead one of the workpackages and participate in another workpackage, and contribute our expertise in multi-criteria model analysis. On January 26-27 2006 a requirement analysis workshop was organized by Stream 2b on "Requirement Analysis for Multi-Criteria Methods and Tools required for NEEDS RS 2b". The goal of the workshop was to discuss the requirements analysis for the Multi-Criteria (MC) methods and tools to be used by Stream 2b, and thus to provide a major input to the final version of the Requirement Analysis (RA). All participants of Stream 2b were invited for the workshop. The presentations covered three types of topics: (1) in depth analysis of the requirements for MC; (2) experience of the related activities; (3) features of pertinent MC methods and tools. There was ample time for discussions which resulted in clarification of both requirements and experience.

The results of the workshop are being included in the report on the RA. The report will in turn be the basis for the selection of multi-criteria methods and tools that will be used in further activities of Stream 2b.

A comprehensive presentation of the methods, tools and applications of multicriteria analysis can be found in:

• A. Wierzbicki and M. Makowski and J. Wessels, Model-Based Decision Support Methodology with Environmental Applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Series: Mathematical Modeling and Applications, 2000, ISBN 0-7923-6327-2

More specific discussions can be found in:

• M. Makowski and A. Wierzbicki, Modeling Knowledge: Model-Based Decision Support and Soft Computations, X. Yu and J. Kacprzyk, Applied Decision Support with Soft Computing, Berlin, New York, Springer-Verlag, 2003, pp. 3-60, Series: Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, vol. 124, ISBN 3-540-02491-3, draft version available here;
• M. Makowski, Multi-objective Decision Support Including Sensitivity Analysis, UNESCO-EOLSS Joint Committee, Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, Paris, Eolss Publishers, 2004, p. 24, http://www.eolss.net, article no 001-373 (4.20.4.3), draft version available here;
• J. Granat and M. Makowski, Interactive Specification and Analysis of Aspiration-Based Preferences, EJOR, 2000, vol. 122, no 2, pp. 469-485, available also as IIASA's RR-00-009;

Earlier applications are documented e.g. in:

• M. Makowski and L. Somlyody and D. Watkins, Multiple Criteria Analysis for Water Quality Management in the Nitra Basin, Water Resources Bulletin, vol. 32, no 5, 1996, pp. 937-951;
• J. Antoine, G. Fischer and M. Makowski, Multiple Criteria Land Use Analysis, Applied Mathematics and Computation, vol. 83, no. 2-3, 1997, pp. 195-215, available also as IIASA's RR-98-005;

Responsible for this page: Deirdre Zeller
Last updated: 17 Nov 2011