Representing ordinal preferences in the decision support system GMCR II

Preference information about states, or possible scenarios, is required in modeling multiple-participant decision processes. In the decision support system GMCR II, a flexible methodology is presented for conveniently eliciting a decision maker's relative preferences. More specifically, when states are defined in terms of discrete option choices, three techniques are available for ordering the states from most to least preferred, with ties permitted. One method is option weighting, in which weights are assigned to each option choice, and total weights used to determine an ordering of states. A second technique is to employ an option prioritizing scheme, based upon a set of lexicographic statements. Subsequently, one can rank the states manually using a process called fine tuning. When the number of states is not too large, one may wish to order them directly and thereby skip the option weighting and option prioritizing procedures. Application of these approaches to obtain and represent ordinal preference information allows GMCR II to model real-world conflicts expeditiously, and analyze them effectively.