Multicriteria analysis with fuzzy pairwise comparison

Presents an approach for solving qualitative multicriteria analysis (MA) problems using fuzzy pairwise comparison. Fuzzy numbers are used to approximate the decision-maker´s (DM´s) subjective assessments in assessing alternative performance and criteria importance. The concept of fuzzy extent analysis is applied for solving the reciprocal judgement matrices. To avoid the complex and unreliable process of comparing fuzzy utilities, the /spl alpha/-cut technique is applied to transform the fuzzy performance matrix into an interval matrix. Incorporated with the DM´s attitude towards risk, an overall performance index is obtained for each alternative across all criteria in line with the ideal solution concept. An empirical study of a tender selection problem in Australia is conducted. The result shows that the approach developed is simple and comprehensible in concept, efficient in computation, and robust and flexible in modeling the human evaluation process, thus making it of general use for solving practical MA problems.