Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: State of the Art Surveys

The purpose of this introductory part is to present an overall view of what MCDAis today. In Section 1, I will attempt to bring answers to questions such as: whatis it reasonable to expect from MCDA? Why decision aiding is more often multi-criteria than monocriterion? What are the main limitations to objectivity? Section2 will be devoted to a presentation of the conceptual architecture that constitutesthe main keys for analyzing and structuring problem situations. Decision aidingcannot and must not be envisaged jointly with a hypothesis of perfect knowledge.Different ways for apprehending the various sources of imperfect knowledge willbe introduced in Section 3. A robustness analysis is necessary in most cases. Thecrucial question of how can we take into account all criteria comprehensively inorder to compare potential actions to one another will be tackled in Section 4. Inthis introductory part, I will only present a general framework for positioning themain operational approaches that exist today. In Section 5, I will discuss somemore philosophical aspects of MCDA. For providing some aid in a decision con-text, we have to choose among different paths which one seems to be the mostappropriate, or how to combine some of them: the path of realism which leadsto the quest for a discussion for discovering, the axiomatic path which is oftenassociated with the quest of norms for prescribing, or the path of constructivismwhich goes hand in hand with the quest of working hypothesis for recommending.