Multicriteria models for fair resource allocation

Resource allocation problems are concerned with the allocation of limited resources among competing activities so as to achieve the best performances. However, in systems which serve many users there is a need to respect some fairness rules while looking for the overall efficiency. The so–called Max–Min Fairness is widely used to meet these goals. However, allocating the resource to optimize the worst performance may cause dramatic worsening of the overall system efficiency. Therefore, several other fair allocation schemes are being considered and analyzed. It is shown in this paper how the concepts of multiple criteria equitable optimization can effectively be used to generate various fair and efficient allocation schemes. First, it is demonstrated how the scalar inequality measures can be consistently used in bicriteria models to search for fair and efficient allocations. Further, two alternative multiple criteria models equivalent to equitable optimization are introduced, thus allowing to generate a larger variety of fair and efficient resource allocation schemes.