Edited as a Festschrift in honor of Prof Milan Zeleny, this volume reflects and emulates his unmistakable legacy: the essential multidimensionality of human and social affairs. It contains papers dealing with: Multiple Criteria Decision Making; Social and Human System Management; and Information, Knowledge and Wisdom Management.

When people or computers need to make a decision, typically multiple conflicting criteria need to be evaluated; for example, when we buy a car, we need to consider safety, cost and comfort. Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) has been researched for decades. Now as the rising trend of big-data analytics in supporting decision making, MCDM can be more powerful when combined with state-of-the-art analytics and machine learning. In this book, the authors introduce a new framework of MCDM, which can lead to more accurate decision making. Several real-world cases will be included to illustrate the new hybrid approaches.

Software is an essential enabler for science and the new economy. It creates new markets and directions for a more reliable, flexible and robust society and empowers the exploration of our world in ever more depth, but it often falls short of our expectations. Current software methodologies, tools, and techniques are still neither robust nor reliable enough for the constantly evolving market, and many promising approaches have so far failed to deliver the solutions required. This book presents the keynote ‘Engineering Cyber-Physical Systems’ and 64 peer-reviewed papers from the 16th International Conference on New Trends in Intelligent Software Methodology Tools, and Techniques, (SoMeT_17), held in Kitakyushu, Japan, in September 2017, which brought together researchers and practitioners to share original research results and practical development experience in software science and related new technologies. The aim of the SoMeT conferences is to capture the essence of the new state-of-the-art in software science and its supporting technology and to identify the challenges such technology will have to master. The book explores new trends and theories which illuminate the direction of developments in this field, and will be of interest to anyone whose work involves software science and its integration into tomorrow’s global information society.

In two volumes, this new edition presents the state of the art in Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). Reflecting the explosive growth in the field seen during the last several years, the editors not only present surveys of the foundations of MCDA, but look as well at many new areas and new applications. Individual chapter authors are among the most prestigious names in MCDA research, and combined their chapters bring the field completely up to date. Part I of the book considers the history and current state of MCDA, with surveys that cover the early history of MCDA and an overview that discusses the “pre-theoretical” assumptions of MCDA. Part II then presents the foundations of MCDA, with individual chapters that provide a very exhaustive review of preference modeling, along with a chapter devoted to the axiomatic basis of the different models that multiple criteria preferences. Part III looks at outranking methods, with three chapters that consider the ELECTRE methods, PROMETHEE methods, and a look at the rich literature of other outranking methods. Part IV, on Multiattribute Utility and Value Theories (MAUT), presents chapters on the fundamentals of this approach, the very well known UTA methods, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and its more recent extension, the Analytic Network Process (ANP), as well as a chapter on MACBETH (Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique). Part V looks at Non-Classical MCDA Approaches, with chapters on risk and uncertainty in MCDA, the decision rule approach to MCDA, the fuzzy integral approach, the verbal decision methods, and a tentative assessment of the role of fuzzy sets in decision analysis. Part VI, on Multiobjective Optimization, contains chapters on recent developments of vector and set optimization, the state of the art in continuous multiobjective programming, multiobjective combinatorial optimization, fuzzy multicriteria optimization, a review of the field of goal programming, interactive methods for solving multiobjective optimization problems, and relationships between MCDA and evolutionary multiobjective optimization (EMO). Part VII, on Applications, selects some of the most significant areas, including contributions of MCDA in finance, energy planning problems, telecommunication network planning and design, sustainable development, and portfolio analysis. Finally, Part VIII, on MCDM software, presents well known MCDA software packages.

This book provides comprehensive coverage of the latest research on multiple criteria research analysis (MCDA) and related areas, gathering a collection of high-quality chapters prepared by leading scholars in the field. By covering the established streams in MCDA research and simultaneously exploring new and emerging areas of application, it offers a unique reference resource for the future development of MCDA. The book approaches MCDA as one of the most active areas in operations research and management science (OR/MS). It presents not only the significant advances achieved to date, but also the new opportunities and challenges arising for both the theory and practice of MCDA. Among many others, the book addresses behavioral and conceptual aspects of decision aiding and decision making, problem structuring issues in the framework of new technological and socio-economic advances, methodological and algorithmic advances for analytical modeling and decision aiding, as well as a number of new application areas in engineering, business, and the social sciences.

rd This book constitutes a collection of extended versions of papers presented at the 23 IFIP TC7 Conference on System Modeling and Optimization, which was held in C- cow, Poland, on July 23–27, 2007. It contains 7 plenary and 22 contributed articles, the latter selected via a peer reviewing process. Most of the papers are concerned with optimization and optimal control. Some of them deal with practical issues, e. g. , p- formance-based design for seismic risk reduction, or evolutionary optimization in structural engineering. Many contributions concern optimization of infini- dimensional systems, ranging from a general overview of the variational analysis, through optimization and sensitivity analysis of PDE systems, to optimal control of neutral systems. A significant group of papers is devoted to shape analysis and opti- zation. Sufficient optimality conditions for ODE problems, and stochastic control methods applied to mathematical finance, are also investigated. The remaining papers are on mathematical programming, modeling, and information technology. The conference was the 23rd event in the series of such meetings biennially org- ized under the auspices of the Seventh Technical Committee “Systems Modeling and Optimization” of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP TC7).