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Multiple Criteria Decision Aid is a field which has seen important developments in the last few years. This is not only illustrated by the increasing number of papers and communications in the scientific journals and Congresses, but also by the activities of several international working groups. In 1983, a first Summer School was organised at Catania (Sicily) to promote multicriteria decision-aid in companies and to encourage specialists to exchange didactic material. The second School was held in 1985 at Narnur (Belgium) and I am pleased now to present the selected readings from the "Third International Summer School on Multicriteria Decision Aid: Methods, Applications and Software", which took place in Monte Estoril (Portugal), in 1988. was the quality of the contributions presented by the Such during the Summer School that I have decided to take lecturers advantage of this opportunity to produce a more carefully prepared and homogeneous book rather than a simple volume of proceedings. All the initial versions of the selected papers were revised and some, although not included in the programme of the School, were written in order to give a more complete overview of the MCDA field.

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Introductory Chapter.- Multiple Criteria Decision Aid: An Overview.- I Modelling Decision Situations.- Decision-Aid and Decision-Making.- Action Evaluation and Action Structuring: Different Decision Aid Situations Reviewed Through Two Actual Cases.- Building Criteria: A Prerequisite For MCDA.- Measurement Theory And Decision Aid.- Basic Concepts Of Preference Modelling.- Decision Making In Ill-Structured Environments And With Multiple Criteria.- II The Outranking Approach.- The Outranking Approach And The Foundations Of Electre Methods.- The Construction Of Prescriptions In Outranking Methods.- The Promethee Methods For MCDM; The Promcalc, Gaia And Bankadviser Software.- A Pairwise Criterion Comparison Approach: The Mappac And Pragma Methods.- III Value And Utility Theory Approach.- Conjoint Measurement: Theory And Methods.- Multi Criteria Decision Making And The Analytic Hierarchy Process.- Use Of A Simple Multi-Attribute Value Function Incorporating Visual Interactive Sensitivity Analysis For Multiple Criteria Decision Making.- Interactive Assessment Of Preferences Using Holistic Judgments: The Prefcalc System.- An Additive Value Function Technique With A Fuzzy Outranking Relation For Dealing With Poor Intercriteria Preference Information.- Qualitative Multicriteria Methods In The Netherlands.- IV Interactive Multiple Objective Programming.- Interactive Multiple Objective Programming: Concepts, Current Status, And Future Directions.- A Comparison Of Microcomputer Implemented Interactive Molp Methods Based On A Case Study.- The Multiobjective Linear Programming Decision Support System Vig And Its Applications.- A Personal Computer Version Of The MCDA Approach Strange.- Interactive Multifactorial Planning: State Of The Art.- V Group Decision And Negotiation.- An Introduction To Group Decision And Negotiation Support.- Group Decision Making: Methodology And Applications.- Supporting Decision Processes: An Approach And Two Examples.- VI The School Case-Study.- Presentation Of The School Case-Study: Evaluation Of Personnel - How To Rank Officers For Promotion?.- A Report On The Study Of The Portuguese Navy Case.

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