From the Preface:

"There exist two basic types of decision problems. One is confronted with the solution of problems of the first type if the preferences of the decision-maker are clearly stated, but the information about the alternative characteristics is incomplete. The problems of the second type are characterized by the usually large amount of additional preference information, which should be acquired from experts and/or the decision maker(s), evaluated, and used in an optimal way to select a compromise decision support procedure. The main difficulty in the first kind of problems consists in getting the appropriate information, which may often be a very hard task. As an example for this type of problems may serve the stock exchange investment decisions, where the criteria are well defined and the decision to be made is well defined provided that the future stock prices are known. Since the latter are ex definitione unknown, they are replaced by some stochastic estimation, and the decision problem becomes a typical decision-making problem with risk. In the second type of problems the difficulty consists in constructing an appropriate mathematical model of the decision situation using all relevant information available".

Contents:

• Summary
• Preface
• Mathematical Foundations of Multicriteria Optimization
• A Brief Introduction to Multicriteria Optimization and Multicriteria Decision Theory
• The Structure of Sets of Reference Points
• Optimality Conditions for Decision Choice Methods Based on Reference Points and Proximity Measures
• Application of Multiple Reference Points and Reference Sets to Multicriteria Decision Support
• An Interactive Modification of Constraints To Attain a Target Reference Set
• Optimal Control of Discrete - Event Systems Based on Reference Sets and Reference Trajectories
• Final Remarks on m"How to Apply the Decision Support Tools?"
• Bibliography
• Index
• List of Symbols

AGH PUBLISHERS, CRACOW 1996

ISSN 0867-6631, 165pp, Price US $ 25.00 including surface mail