Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is all about making choices in the presence of multiple conflicting criteria. MCDM has become one of the most important and fastest growing subfields of Operations Research/Management Science. As modern MCDM started to emerge about 50 years ago, it is now a good time to take stock of developments. This book aims to present an informal, nontechnical history of MCDM, supplemented with many pictures. It covers the major developments in MCDM, from early history until now. It also covers fascinating discoveries by Nobel Laureates and other prominent scholars. The book begins with the early history of MCDM, which covers the roots of MCDM through the 1960s. It proceeds to give a decade-by-decade account of major developments in the field starting from the 1970s until now. Written in a simple and accessible manner, this book will be of interest to students, academics, and professionals in the field of decision sciences.

This book documents the history of two research papers, from the first drafts to the final polished published articles, including the reviewer comments and the author responses. The documentary provides unique insights into the publishing process, which at times is filled with uncertainties, not only for young researchers. The book discusses lessons learned and also provides an experienced editor's and reviewer's perspective. In the light of the high pressure on young faculty to publish successfully, this book offers itself as a guide to publishing efficiently and effectively in a highly competitive scientific environment.

The pioneering study by Bowman [1980) reawakened interest in risk and return relations in the strategic management literature. We do not examine this literature here because we have elsewhere reviewed it in detail 1 and because, for the most part, these studies have been confined to ex post data. Discussions of the strategies which subjects used to direct their ex ante evaluations of risks and returns have either been omitted or else have been only indirectly inferred from ex post data. In addition, with few exceptions, this literature does not attempt to ascertain the meanings that might have been assigned by subjects to terms like "risk" and/or the "returns" with which they have been concerned. Even fewer of these studies have attempted to ascertain how the subjects implemented their definitions en of prospective strategies. Thus, tius literature may route to arriving at evaluations best be regarded as bearing only indirect relations to the present study which is concerned not only with the meanings assigned to terms like "risk" and "return" but also with how these terms are used in arriving at risk and return evaluations of proposed strategies as well as how they are measured and used, on an ex ante basis en route to seeing how these evaluations match with ex post performance. In a sense, one part of this study--i. e.

This book provides cutting-edge research results and application experiencesfrom researchers and practitioners in multiple criteria decision making areas. It consists of three parts: MCDM Foundation and Theory, MCDM Methodology, and MCDM Applications. In Part I, it covers the historical MCDM development, the influence of MCDM on technology, society and policy, Pareto optimization, and analytical hierarchy process. In Part II, the book presents different MCDM algorithms based on techniques of robust estimating, evolutionary multiobjective optimization, Choquet integrals, and genetic search. In Part III, this book demonstrates a variety of MCDM applications, including project management, financial investment, credit risk analysis, railway transportation, online advertising, transport infrastructure, environmental pollution, chemical industry, and regional economy. The 17 papers of the book have been selected out of the 121 accepted papers at the 20th International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making "New State of MCDM in 21st Century," held at Chengdu, China, in 2009. The 35 contributors of these papers stem from 10 countries."

In the twenty-first century the sustainability of energy and transportation systems is on the top of the political agenda in many countries around the world.

Environmental impacts of human economic activity necessitate the consideration of conflicting goals in decision making processes to develop sustainable systems. Any sustainable development has to reconcile conflicting economic and environmental objectives and criteria. The science of multiple criteria decision making has a lot to offer in addressing this need. Decision making with multiple (conflicting) criteria is the topic of research that is at the heart of the International Society of Multiple Criteria Decision Making. This book is based on selected papers presented at the societies 19th International Conference, held at The University of Auckland, New Zealand, from 7th to 12th January 2008 under the theme "MCDM for Sustainable Energy and Transportation Systems''.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to decision-making in an MCDM framework. Designed as a tutorial, it presents the main concepts and methods to be applied, together with essential background information. This includes the concept of nondominance, Simon's bounded rationality, Tversky and Kahneman's prospect theory, and the concepts of behavioral vs. mathematical convergence and premature stopping put forward by Korhonen, Moskowitz and Wallenius. The book concludes with a non-technical review of many popular decision algorithms, including the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), VIMDA, and a number of classic interactive man-machine algorithms. In essence, the book is a "one-stop" source on everything you need to know about managerial decision-making in the multiple-criteria setting.