Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods : A Comparative Study

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has been one of the fastest growing problem areas in many disciplines. The central problem is how to evaluate a set of alternatives in terms of a number of criteria. Although this problem is very relevant in practice, there are few methods available and their quality is hard to determine. Thus, the question `Which is the best method for a given problem?' has become one of the most important and challenging ones.
This is exactly what this book has as its focus and why it is important. The author extensively compares, both theoretically and empirically, real-life MCDM issues and makes the reader aware of quite a number of surprising `abnormalities' with some of these methods. What makes this book so valuable and different is that even though the analyses are rigorous, the results can be understood even by the non-specialist.
Audience: Researchers, practitioners, and students; it can be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate or graduate courses in business and engineering.

Dr. Triantaphyllou did his graduate studies at Penn State University from 1984 to 1990. While at Penn State, he earned a Dual M.S. degree in Environment and Operations Research, an M.S. degree in Computer Science and a Dual Ph.D. degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering (IMSE) Department, and also the Associate Dean for Outreach and Development for the College of Engineering, at the Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, LA, U.S.A.

His research is focused in decision-making theory and applications, and data mining and knowledge discovery. Since the years he was a graduate student, he has developed new methods for data mining and knowledge discovery and also has explored some of the most fundamental and intriguing subjects in decision making. In 1999 he received the prestigious IIE (Institute of Industrial Engineers), O.R. (Operations Research) Division, Research Award for his research contributions in the above fields. Some of his graduate students have also received national awards and distinctions.

He always enjoys sharing the results of his research with his students and is also getting them actively involved in his research activities. He has received teaching awards and distinctions. His research has been funded by federal and state agencies, and the private sector. He has extensively published in the areas of decision-making and in the interface of operations research and computer science in some of the top refereed journals and made numerous presentations in national and international conferences.

Dr. Triantaphyllou has a strong inter-disciplinary background and research approach. He has always enjoyed organizing multi-disciplinary teams of researchers and practitioners with complementary expertise. These groups try to comprehensively attack some of the most urgent problems in the sciences and engineering. He is a strong believer of the premise that the next round of major scientific and engineering discoveries will come from the work of such inter-disciplinary groups. He can be reached by e-mail at: trianta@lsu.edu More details of his work, as well a very extensive description of this book, with an extensive table of contents, subject index, the preface, and much more, and also descriptions on other related publications, can be found in Dr. Triantaphyllou's web page at the Louisiana State University (LSU).