An interactive multiple criteria decision making algorithm for the planification of agro-socio-economic systems

For multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems, interactive methods based on sequentially updated utility functions are efficient because the incorporation of such functions which correspond better to the preference structure of the decision-makers (DM) can accelerate the interactive process which finally leads to a satisfying compromise solution. However, since the chosen utility functions are generally nonlinear, the application of this method to large-scale problems is generally difficult or impossible. An interactive method is proposed which combines a sequentially updated utility function with a method of sequentially generating the Pareto optimal solutions. The interactive optimization of the nonlinear utility function is done subject to two sequentially generated criterion subsets that are of relatively smaller dimension. This makes it possible to apply the method to practical, large-scale regional development problems.