Road route decisions very frequently cause discussions and disagreement since they involve the number of stakeholders with competing interests. Before the construction of the road can start, the route for this road has to be determined, taking into account various facets, e.g. financial, technological, social and environmental ones. Such a situation can be described in the following way: the best possible choice must be made out of a finite set of alternatives (potential road routes) evaluated against a set of criteria. For this purpose different multicriteria decision aiding methods can be used, e.g. a novel tool called SIPRES. Its algorithm combines the key elements of the revised Simos’ procedure and the ZAPROS method. The method is transparent and easy to implement. On the one hand, it allows decision-makers to define their preferences simply and provides a straightforward but effective method for analysing the trade-offs between the alternatives using selected reference alternatives only (the ZAPROS-like approach). On the other hand, the revised Simos’ procedure applied in the method allows determining the cardinal scores for the alternatives. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the road route can be selected with the help of the SIPRES method, and to show thereby that this technique may be useful for solving such complex problems and may improve a decision-making process in certain situations.
The main objective of this paper is to present an example of the IT system implementation with advanced mathematical optimisation for job scheduling. The proposed genetic procedure leads to the Pareto front, and the application of the multiple criteria decision aiding (MCDA) approach allows extraction of the final solution. Definition of the key performance indicator (KPI), reflecting relevant features of the solutions, and the efficiency of the genetic procedure provide the Pareto front comprising the representative set of feasible solutions. The application of chosen MCDA, namely elimination et choix traduisant la réalité (ELECTRE) method, allows for the elicitation of the decision maker (DM) preferences and subsequently leads to the final solution. This solution fulfils all of the DM expectations and constitutes the best trade-off between considered KPIs. The proposed method is an efficient combination of genetic optimisation and the MCDA method.
Numerous problems that emerge in the process of project management can be presented as multi-criteria issues and solved with the help of appropriate methods. The contracting authority, selecting one tender out of many available tenders, assesses them, taking into account various criteria, e.g. price, expected execution time and the contractor’s experience. The owner of a company intending to purchase the fixed assets requisite for the realization of the project behaves similarly, i.e. the most advantageous model of the device is chosen, taking into account not only its price but also production capacity, energy intensity, noise emission, service availability, etc. From among many concepts, the investor has to choose a solution which frequently constitutes a compromise between price, functional properties, durability and aesthetics of performance, as well as safety of the utilization and impact on the environment. The choice of an investment location depends not only on the market, financial and supply factors, but also on so called soft factors such as the perceived quality of institutions and the attitude of local communities. All such situations can be described in the same way: taking into account preferences of the decision maker, the best possible choice must be made out of a finite set of alternatives evaluated according to a finite set of criteria. There are many different methods that can be used to aid a decision maker in this choice, including, but not limited to, techniques based on the outranking relation, verbal decision analysis and the MACBETH method. In this article, they will be compared and their applicability to different types of decision making problems will be considered. Furthermore, the PROMETHEE II method with a veto threshold will be presented within the text. Because the application of project management in the wedding planning business has gained wide popularity, as an illustrative example an empirical study of selecting the best venue for a wedding reception will be elaborated.
Introduction: Stress among healthcare professionals has become a major issue in healthcare organizations operating at the domestic, international and global fronts. This profession however, requires people to be physically, emotionally and mentally alert, in order to care for other people. Purpose: To ascertain stress factors among healthcare professional in Nigeria. In order to rank and establish causal relationships among the various stress factors using the Multi-Criteria Decision Making methods (MCDM). Materials and methods: A validated AHP-based questionnaires was used to conduct a survey of 386 healthcare professionals from two tertiary teaching hospitals in South-west, Nigeria, using proportional quota sampling procedure. Results: The results reveal that relationship factor has the most significant impact on the stress of healthcare professionals with an Eigen vector of 0.3531. It finds also that the role factor has the least significant criterion, having an Eigen vector of 0.0778. At the global level of ranking the alternative decision occupational stress factor, speed of change has the highest priority, the least being financial problems. Conclusions: In comparison with others, the health care profession is highly stressful, due mainly to the fact that it has a higher rate of psychological distress. Keeping this in mind, this study has examined what determines occupational stress among healthcare professionals in teaching hospitals in Nigeria.
This study aims to develop practice guidelines for the preparation of local regulations promoting sustainable tourism planning for the area located at the entrance to the Tatra National Park, Poland. Included in the study was a set of tourism activities put forward by the local community. These activities were divided into two priorities: sustainable tourist activities (hiking and walking, cycling, horseback riding) and investments that would have an environmental impact (downhill skiing, recreational infrastructure, commerce, catering). The analysis criteria covered the tourist attractiveness of the area and its suitability for a given activity (benefit), as well as requirements concerning the protection of nature, topographical relief, landscape, and traditional land use (cost). These criteria were evaluated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and summarized using the Weighted Linear Combination (WLC). The results showed the high attractiveness of the area for both priorities. However, due to the area's unique nature, investments having an environmental impact must be limited to the vicinity of the existing built-up areas. The use of MCDA supports decision-making at the local scale, significantly enhances the transparency of the results, and facilitates communication with local communities. The comparison with the current local law provisions showed the shortcomings of the methods used to date when preparing planning instruments.
A great variety of multi-criteria decision aiding (MCDA) methods has already been developed but few papers have dealt with mixed data (qualitative and quantitative). MCDA techniques accepting different types of evaluations (such as deterministic, stochastic and/or fuzzy ones) are rather rare and not very well known, even though this issue is crucial from a practical point of view, since mixed evaluations occur very frequently in appraising and selecting projects and organizations, as well as in risk management modelling, among other fields. This paper presents a new discrete MCDA tool developed for mixed performances of alternatives called BIPOLAR MIX. It is based on the classical BIPOLAR method proposed by Konarzewska-Gubała (1989), and on its modification, namely the BIPOLAR method with stochastic dominance (SD) rules, proposed by Górecka (2009). A numerical example at the end of the paper illustrates the problem of ordering projects applying for co-financing from the European Union (EU).
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.