KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND EXPLANATION FOR MULTI-ATTRIBUTE DECISION MAKING ∗

A decision making approach which combines multi-attribute decision making techniques with expert systems is described in the paper. In this approach, knowledge about a particular decision making problem is represented in the form of tree-structured criteria and decision rules. Decision making is supported by an expert system shell. In the paper, the discussion is mainly concentrated on the part of the shell which deals with interactive knowledge acquisition and knowledge explanation. The corresponding algorithms are given and discussed. Key-words: expert systems, multi-attribute decision making, knowledge representation, knowledge acquisition, knowledge explanation.