Dynamic MCDM: The Case of Urban Infrastructure Decision Making

Many societal decisions involve complexity and conflicting objectives. Preferences in such environments can be expected to change as situations evolve. In this paper, we propose a procedure that incorporates MCDM into system dynamics modeling to handle dynamic multiple criteria situations, which we name dynamic MCDM. A case of urban infrastructure is presented to illustrate the procedure. Dynamic MCDM can handle different lags in economic, social, economic and technical effects of large scale systems; thus, it may help decision makers avoid selecting alternatives apparently effective in the short term, but detrimental in the long term.