Decision-aid for discrete multiple criteria decision making problems with imprecise data

Abstract We describe ways of aiding decision making with a discrete set of alternatives. In many decision situations, it is not possible to obtain explicit preference information from the decision makers. Instead, useful decision-aid can be provided to the decision makers by describing what kind of weighting of the criteria result in certain choices of the alternatives. The suggested treatment is based on the basic ideas of the ELECTRE III method. The modelling of the preferences by pseudo-criteria is especially helpful in case the data, that is, the criterion values are imprecise. Unlike ELECTRE III, no ranking of the alternatives is produced. Based on a minimum-procedure in the exploitation of the outranking relations, we provide information about the weights of the criteria that make a certain alternative the best. We also present an interactive searching procedure in the weighting space. The auxiliary optimization problems to be solved are nondifferentiable. Cases with both single and multiple decision makers are considered.