This book presents the state-of-the-art, current challenges, and future perspectives for the field of many-criteria optimization and decision analysis. The field recognizes that real-life problems often involve trying to balance a multiplicity of considerations simultaneously – such as performance, cost, risk, sustainability, and quality. The field develops theory, methods and tools that can support decision makers in finding appropriate solutions when faced with many (typically more than three) such criteria at the same time. The book consists of two parts: key research topics, and emerging topics. Part I begins with a general introduction to many-criteria optimization, perspectives from research leaders in real-world problems, and a contemporary survey of the attributes of problems of this kind. This part continues with chapters on fundamental aspects of many-criteria optimization, namely on order relations, quality measures, benchmarking, visualization, and theoretical considerations. Part II offers more specialized chapters on correlated objectives, heterogeneous objectives, Bayesian optimization, and game theory. Written by leading experts across the field of many-criteria optimization, this book will be an essential resource for researchers in the fields of evolutionary computing, operations research, multiobjective optimization, and decision science.

Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: State of the Art Surveys provides survey articles and references of the seminal or state-of-the-art research on MCDA. The material covered ranges from the foundations of MCDA, over various MCDA methodologies (outranking methods, multiattribute utility and value theories, non-classical approaches) to multiobjective mathematical programming, MCDA applications, and software. This vast amount of material is organized in 8 parts, with a total of 25 chapters. More than 2000 references are listed.

This book presents a collection of essays written by leading researchers to honor Roman Słowiński’s major scholarly interests and contributions. He is well-known for conducting extensive research on methodologies and techniques for intelligent decision support, where he combines operational research and artificial intelligence. The book reconstructs his main contributions, presents cutting-edge research and provides an outlook on the most promising and advanced domains of computer science and multiple criteria decision aiding. The respective chapters cover a wide range of related research areas, including decision sciences, ordinal data mining, preference learning and multiple criteria decision aiding, modeling of uncertainty and imprecision in decision problems, rough set theory, fuzzy set theory, multi-objective optimization, project scheduling and decision support applications. As such, the book will appeal to researchers and scholars in related fields.

During the week of September 20-23, 1983, an International Workshop on Interactive Decision Analysis and Interpretative Computer Intelligence was held at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria. More than fifty scientists representing seventeen coun tries participated. The aim of the Workshop was to review existing approaches to problems involving multiple conflicting objectives, to look at methods and techniques for interactive decision analysis, and to demonstrate theuse of existing interactive decision-support systems. The Workshop was motivated, firstly, by the realization that the rapid development of computers, especially microcomputers, will greatly increase the scope and capabilities of computerized decision-support systems. It is important to explore the potential of these systems for use in handling the complex technological, environmental, economic and social problems thatface the world today. Research in decision-support systems also has another, less tangible but possibly more important, motivation. The development of efficient sys tems for decision support requires a thorough understanding of the dif ferences between the decision-making processes in different nations and cultures. An understanding of the different rationales underlying decision making is not only necessary for the development of efficient decision support systems, but is also an important factor in encouraging inter national understanding and cooperation.

The generalized area of multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) can be defined as the body of methods and procedures by which the concern for multiple conflicting criteria can be formally incorporated into the analytical process. MCDM consists mostly of two branches, multiple criteria optimization and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). While MCDA is typically concerned with multiple criteria problems that have a small number of alternatives often in an environment of uncertainty (location of an airport, type of drug rehabilitation program), multiple criteria optimization is typically directed at problems formulated within a mathematical programming framework, but with a stack of objectives instead of just one (river basin management, engineering component design, product distribution). It is about the most modern treatment of multiple criteria optimization that this book is concerned. I look at this book as a nicely organized and well-rounded presentation of what I view as ”new wave” topics in multiple criteria optimization. Looking back to the origins of MCDM, most people agree that it was not until about the early 1970s that multiple criteria optimization c- gealed as a field. At this time, and for about the following fifteen years, the focus was on theories of multiple objective linear programming that subsume conventional (single criterion) linear programming, algorithms for characterizing the efficient set, theoretical vector-maximum dev- opments, and interactive procedures.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, EMO 2015 held in Guimarães, Portugal in March/April 2015. The 68 revised full papers presented together with 4 plenary talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 90 submissions. The EMO 2015 aims to continue these type of developments, being the papers presented focused in: theoretical aspects, algorithms development, many-objectives optimization, robustness and optimization under uncertainty, performance indicators, multiple criteria decision making and real-world applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, EMO 2011, held in Ouro Preto, Brazil, in April 2011. The 42 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 83 submissions. The papers deal with fundamental questions of EMO theory, such as the development of algorithmically efficient tools for the evaluation of solution-set quality , the theoretical questions related to solution archiving and others. They report on the continuing effort in the development of algorithms, either for dealing with particular classes of problems or for new forms of processing the problem information. Almost one third of the papers is related to EMO applications in a diversity of fields. Eleven papers are devoted to promote the interaction with the related field of Multi-Criterion Decision Making (MCDM).

The goal of the Encyclopedia of Optimization is to introduce the reader to a complete set of topics that show the spectrum of research, the richness of ideas, and the breadth of applications that has come from this field. The second edition builds on the success of the former edition with more than 150 completely new entries, designed to ensure that the reference addresses recent areas where optimization theories and techniques have advanced. Particularly heavy attention resulted in health science and transportation, with entries such as "Algorithms for Genomics", "Optimization and Radiotherapy Treatment Design", and "Crew Scheduling".

This book considers a broad range of areas from decision making methods applied in the contexts of Risk, Reliability and Maintenance (RRM). Intended primarily as an update of the 2015 book Multicriteria and Multiobjective Models for Risk, Reliability and Maintenance Decision Analysis, this edited work provides an integration of applied probability and decision making. Within applied probability, it primarily includes decision analysis and reliability theory, amongst other topics closely related to risk analysis and maintenance. In decision making, it includes multicriteria decision making/aiding (MCDM/A) methods and optimization models. Within MCDM, in addition to decision analysis, some of the topics related to mathematical programming areas are considered, such as multiobjective linear programming, multiobjective nonlinear programming, game theory and negotiations, and multiobjective optimization. Methods related to these topics have been applied to the context of RRM. In MCDA, several other methods are considered, such as outranking methods, rough sets and constructive approaches. The book addresses an innovative treatment of decision making in RRM, improving the integration of fundamental concepts from both areas of RRM and decision making. This is accomplished by presenting current research developments in decision making on RRM. Some pitfalls of decision models on practical applications on RRM are discussed and new approaches for overcoming those drawbacks are presented.