Outranking-based interactive exploration of a set of multicriteria alternatives

Interactive procedures are very effective for exploring sets of alternatives with a view to finding the best compromise alternative. This paper considers the interactive exploration of implicitly or explicitly given large sets of alternatives. Upon review of classical interactive procedures, which usually assume a utility function preference model, the paper distinguishes three typical operations used in various interactive procedures: contraction of the explored set, exploration of some neighbourhood of a current alternative and reduction of a sample of the explored set. After pointing out some areas for improvement in the traditional procedures, the paper describes three interactive procedures performing the three operations respectively using an outranking relation preference model. Owing to the proposed ways of building and exploiting the outranking relation, the weak points of the traditional procedures can be overcome. Finally the paper solves an exemplary problem using all three procedures.