Article ID: | iaor19991036 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 98 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 571 |
End Page Number: | 586 |
Publication Date: | May 1997 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | Agrell Per J. |
Keywords: | decision theory: multiple criteria |
The concept of redundancy is accepted in Operations Research and Information Theory. In Linear Programming, a constraint is said to be redundant if the feasible decision space is identical with or without the constraint. In Information Theory, redundancy is used as a measure of the stability against noise in transmission. Analogies with Multi Criteria Decision Making are indicated and it is argued that the redundancy concept should be used as a regular feature in conditioning and analysis of Multi Criteria Programs. Properties of a proposed conflict-based characterisation are stated and some existence results are derived. Redundancy is here intended for interactive methods, when the efficient set is progressively explored. A new redundancy test for the linear case is formulated from the framework. A probabilistic method based on correlation is proposed and tested for the non-linear case. Finally, some general guidelines are given concerning the redundancy problem.