Decision support system for classification of a finite set of multicriteria alternatives

The paper presents a new decision method and a decision support system (DSS) for solving multicriteria classification problems: how to allocate alternatives having evaluations in the terms of several criteria into ordered decision classes. In contrast to previous statements of this problem, a relatively small subset of alternatives is presented for classification. The efficiency of the method is estimated as the minimum number of questions posed to the decision maker (DM) to accomplish the needed classification. The main ideas of the new method as well as its evaluation by a statistical modeling approach are presented in the paper. A practical example is given. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.