MCDA

Question 1

In general, describe the purpose of multi-criteria decision analysis.

Answer 1

MCDA is a general framework for supporting complex decision-making situations with multiple and often conflicting objectives that stakeholders groups and/or decision-makers value differently.

Question 2

MCDA has eight general phases, name them.

Answer 2

1: Establish the decision context.
2: Identify the options to be appraised.
3: Identify objectives and criteria.
4: Scoring - assessing the expected performance of the identified options against the criteria.
5: Weighting - assign weights for each of the criterion to reflect their relative importance to the end goal.
6: Compute the weighted total values determining how each option fits the criteria.
7: Examine the results.
8: Sensitivity analysis.

Question 3

Step 1: Establish the decision context - there are three sub-criteria to this MCDA aspect.

Briefly describe them.

Answer 3

Establish aims of the MCDA and identify decision makers and other key players.

Design the socio-technical system for conducting MCDA. When and how are the stakeholders and key players to contribute to the
MCDA? That is the social aspect of the design. What form of MCDA is to
be used, and how will it be implemented? That is the technical aspect.

Consider the context of the appraisal.

Question 4

Step 3: Identify objectives and criteria - there are two sub-criteria for this MCDA aspect.

Briefly describe them.

Answer 4

Identify criteria for assessing the consequences of each option.

Organise criteria by clustering them under the high-level and lower-level objectives in a hierarchy.

Question 5

Step 4: Scoring - there are three sub-criteria for this MCDA aspect.

Briefly describe them.

Answer 5

Describe the consequences of the options.

Score all the options on the criteria.

Check the consistency of the scores of each criterion.

Question 6

Step 6: Combining scores and weights - there are two sub-criteria for this MCDA aspect.

Briefly describe them.

Answer 6

Calculate overall weighted scores at each level in the hierarchy.

Calculate overall weighted scores.

Question 7

Step 8: Sensitivity analysis - there are four sub-criteria for this MCDA aspect.

Briefly describe them.

Answer 7

Conduct the sensitivity analysis - do other preferences or weights affect the overall ordering of options?

Look at the advantage and disadvantages of selected options, and compare options pairwise.

Create possible new options that might be better than the originals if available.

Repeat the above steps until a suitable model is attained.