Multicriteria decision making under uncertainty: a visual approach

Decision problems at the strategic level tend to have multiple criteria and outcomes that are uncertain. Many of the current decision‐making tools are too simplistic to incorporate the important features. This paper considers a multicriteria decision‐making scenario in which the outcomes of the decisions, evaluated on different criteria, are uncertain. The main contribution of this paper is the presentation of a tool that enables decision makers to visualize the expected payoff and likelihood that the payoff of a decision does not fall short of a preset target value. Furthermore, it presents decision makers with a tool that shows the tradeoff between expected payoff and downside risk. A variety of solution techniques are suggested that build upon this visualization.