Ranking alternatives on the basis of preference relations: A progress report with special emphasis on outranking relations

This paper is devoted to the study of techniques allowing one to rank order the elements of a finite set on the basis of a non-necessarily complete or transitive binary relation. In the area of MCDM, such a problem occurs with outranking methods. The paper reviews a number of theoretical results concerning this problem and shows how they may be useful in order to guide the choice of a particular technique.