PROMETHEE method and sensitivity analysis in the software application for the support of decision-making

Abstract

PROMETHEE is one of methods, which fall into multi-criteria analysis (MCA). The MCA, as the name itself indicates, deals with the evaluation of particular variants according to several criteria. Developed software application (MCA8) for the support of multi-criteria decision-making was upgraded about PROMETHEE method and a graphic tool, which enables the execution of the sensitivity analysis. This analysis is used to ascertain how a given model output depends upon the input parameters. The MCA8 software application with mentioned graphic upgrade was developed for purposes of solving multi-criteria decision tasks. In the MCA8 is possible to perform sensitivity analysis by a simple form – through column graphs. We can change criteria significances (weights) in these column graphs directly and watch the changes of the order of variants immediately. The graphic upgrade of MCA8 is demonstrated on the model task, which consists in determination of the order of fifteen distribution substations (DSs). These DSs are ordered according to modernization suitability from the most suitable to the least suitable. Results are different orders of these DSs depending on different criteria weights. The MCA8 software application enables easy computation of six methods of MCA. These methods are IPA, WSA, TOPSIS, CDA, AGREPREF and PROMETHEE. The model task is solved by new method - PROMETHEE, which is also theoretically described. The MCA8 runs on Windows XP with NET framework 2.0. Enter data can be imported and results of analysis, including graphs, can be exported from/to MS Excel.