Multicriteria decision analysis: Some thoughts based on the tutorial and discussion sessions of the ESIGMA meetings

This paper seeks to offer an overview of the streams of thought in the field of multicriteria decision analysis or aid (MCDA) presented and discussed in the sessions of the annual meeting of the EURO Special Interest Group on Multicriteria Analysis (ESIGMA). Our main purpose is to emphasize some of the most important and original contributions made by the prominent scientists invited to those meetings and to reflect on the conclusions of the discussions held along the ten years of existence of ESIGMA, without attempting to review the broad multicriteria field in detail. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.