Multicriteria modeling and result analysis

The ELECTRE method can be successfully used in structured decision problems where a complete set of actions is defined and a consistent family of criteria can easily be elaborated. Many sources of uncertainty, imprecision and ignorance are present (Roy, 1989) and induce difficulties in the definition of the multicriteria (MC) model parameters, which are related above all to the performances of each alternative on each criterion and to the importance of the criteria. An application of ELECTRE is also possible when the decision problem is only partially structured, but in this case there is also uncertainty in relation to the aspects that have to be considered meaningful and several knowledge elements should be acquired to reduce uncertainty. A different methodological approach and some tools are proposed in literature (see for instance Rosenhead, 1989) to deal with unstructured or ill-structured problems.