Title:Decision Support by Interval SMART/SWING - Incorporating Imprecision in the SMART and SWING Methods

Authors: Jyri Mustajoki, Raimo P. Hämäläinen and Ahti A. Salo

Status: Decision Sciences, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2005, 317-339

Keywords: Multi-Criteria Decision Making, Uncertainty Modeling, Imprecision, Decision Support Systems

Interval judgments are a way of handling preferential and informational imprecision in multicriteria decision analysis. In this paper, we study the use of intervals in SMART and SWING weighting methods. We generalize the methods by allowing the reference attribute to be any attribute, not just the most or least important one, and by allowing the decision maker to reply with intervals to the weight ratio questions to account for his/her judgmental imprecision. We also study the practical and procedural implications of using imprecision intervals in these methods. These include, for example, how to select the reference attribute in order to identify as many dominated alternatives as possible. Based on the results of a simulation study, we suggest guidelines for how to carry out the weighting procedure in practice. Computer support can be used to make the weighting process visual and interactive. We describe the WINPRE software for interval SMART/SWING, PAIRS and preference programming. The use of interval SMART/SWING is illustrated by a job selection example.