Multiple-criteria decision analysis, or multiple-criteria decision-making (MDDM) is a subdiscipline of operations research that explicitly considers multiple criteria in decision-making environments. MCDA can be defined as the study of methods and procedures by which concerns about multiple conflicting criteria can be formally incorporated into the management planning process. There have been important advances in this field since the start of the modern multiple criteria decision-making discipline in the early 1960s. Different schools of thought have developed for solving MCDM problems, being the most known the multiobjective mathematical programming school, the goal programming school, the French school with its outranking methods, the evolutionary multiobjective optimization school, the analytic hierarchy process, the fuzzy-set theory, or the multiattribute utility theory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsAuthor information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Ortuño, M.T. (2013). Multi-criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). In: Runehov, A.L.C., Oviedo, L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_200870
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_200870
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-8264-1
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8265-8
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law