Preference structure modelling for multi-objective decision making: A goal-programming approach

We propose a new approach for modelling preference structures in multi-objective decision-making problems. The basic idea of the approach is to first develop PROMETHEE-influenced objective functions and then to use these to reformulate the problem as a distance-based goal-programming (GP) model. Three basic functional forms are proposed and explicit expressions are developed for them. Among other things, the expressions allow for the straightforward development of an interactive framework while keeping the information requirements from the decision maker at a minimum. An ‘automatic’ piecewise linear approximation scheme is proposed for solving the GP model.