About the applicability of MCDA to some robustness problems

Coping with uncertainties or ignorance in decision problems may lead to the idea that several scenarios can occur or that several sets of data can constitute a good representation of the reality. In consequence, numerous authors have focused on the robust aspect of these problems. In such a context, one can consider that a scenario (or a particular instance of the data) permits to partially qualify the solutions, just as a criterion does. In other words, the evaluation of a specific solution for a given scenario could be perceived as the evaluation of this solution according to one particular criterion. With this in mind, the applicability of classic multicriteria concepts to the robustness framework, in the context of optimization problems, is explored. We achieve this by studying their similarities and differences. The distinguishing characteristics bring us to introduce a new problematic: the multicriteria evaluation of robustness. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.