From (and To) a New Generation of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysts: An Introduction to the Field and a Personal View on its Future

The field of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is now mature, with several welldeveloped methodologies, a growing number of real-world interventions and a strong society that joins together researchers and practitioners all over the world. We believe that a new generation of multi-criteria decision analysts is emerging – interested in doing research and/or employing MCDA methodologies into practice – and also hope that, somehow, we could engage even more people in forming this new generation. It is within this scene that the paper was conceptualised. It has a dual aim of i) introducing the field to “young” researchers and practitioners, which may be interested in further developing MCDA methodologies, applying them into practice, or combining them with other decision methods; and ii) reflecting on potential further developments of the field that may be pursued by this new generation. Key-words: multi-criteria evaluation, strategic decision-making, multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) “Have you ever had a difficult decision to make? (...) At one time or another, all of us have wished that a hard decision was easy to make. The sad fact is that hard decisions are just that – hard. As individuals we run into such difficult decisions frequently. Business executives and governmental policy makers struggle with hard problems all the time.” (Clemen and Reilly, p. 1) Introduction The field of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is now mature, with several welldeveloped methodologies, a growing number of real-world interventions, a strong Society that joins together researchers and practitioners all over the world, as well as a specialised journal. Two trends seem to have played an important role in this growing interest about MCDA. Firstly, the growing recognition of the importance of taking into account multiple and, many times, conflictive objectives in the evaluation of strategic alternatives. Secondly, the drive for more participative decision-making processes, which (almost always) involves different stakeholders, with their own values, priorities and objectives. MCDA allows the modelling of multiple and conflictive objectives and also of the tradeoffs between these objectives, permitting to evaluate the multi-dimensional performance of decision alternative. It has been widely used to support participative decision making (via the decision conferencing approach) and also more technical decisions (e.g., for environmental, financial and engineering problems; recent proceedings of the biennial MCDM conference may provide an overview of recent developments in the field). We believe that a new generation of multi-criteria decision analysts is emerging – interested in doing research and/or employing MCDA methodologies into practice – and the Decision Analysis stream in the Young OR conference is a powerful signal of such * Address for Correspondence: Dr Gilberto Montibeller, Kingston Business School, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT2 7 LB, England – UK (E-mail: [email protected])