Decision aid methods

The methods we have presented so far have been based on the domination relation. This relation (which we can define in various ways: Pareto domination or lexicographic domination, for example) allows us to “filter” elements of a set, and to just keep all the elements we can compare themselves. However, there exists another way to obtain a set of solutions, which is based on the setting up of an order relation between these various elements. With the order relation so defined, we can obtain a set of solutions (with a partial order relation) or one and only one solution (with a complete order relation). The other major difference, with respect to the “classical” multiobjective optimization methods, comes from the fact that the decision aid methods work only on discrete sets of points (“classical” multiobjective optimization methods can work on continuous sets). Moreover, decision aid methods allow us to answer several problems, listed in Table 6.1.