Effect of normalization techniques in multi-criteria decision making methods for the design of ship internal layout from a Pareto optimal set

This work aims to assess the suitability of different formulations of normalization techniques within multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) for applying to final design selection from the obtained Pareto frontier. The MCDM methods are applied as the post-optimization process for decision-making about the selection of final design among the non-dominated solutions for a case study. The Pareto front of a hull layout design problem for a ship is considered as the available set of alternatives that are obtained by multi-objective optimization. The selection of the final design is defined as an MCDM problem, and widely used methods of decision-making are adopted to select the final design. Different normalization formulations are applied to transfer the solution values of the Pareto frontier to the required data range for the input of MCDM methods. The effect of the normalization methods is discussed in a comparative study in the decision-making of the internal ship design problem. The results are assessed by comparison of top-ranked alternatives and by evaluating the correlation coefficients of obtained rank for all the alternatives. The normalization methods that are able to keep the dominancy order of the alternatives mostly resulted in similar final design selection.