CRITERION WEIGHTING IN MULTICRITERIA DECISION MAKING

Abstract

Spatial multicriteria decision analysis is process that combines spatial and nonspatial data into resultant decision. Multicriteria decision making (MCDM) problems involve criteria of varying importance to decision makers. For this reason, information about the relative importance of the criteria is required. Criteria weights are derived according to decision maker's preferences and criterion weighting is usually achieved by assigning to each criterion a weight that indicates the criterion importance relative to the other criteria. In this paper, most popular criterion weighting methods including ranking, rating, pairwise comparison, trade-off analysis and fuzzy logic approach for dealing with uncertainty about the relative importance of weights are explained and in one sample application, pairwise comparison method is used for criterion weighting and use of weights on MCDM is demonstrated.