The majority of decision-making problems is characterized by a number of alternatives assessed with a set of criteria. In most of these problems, there are no dominating alternatives, meaning that no alternative performs at least as well as the others in all criteria and better for at least one of them. Consequently, the alternative(s) that can be recommended are those that represent the best compromise according to the selected criteria. Stakeholder preferences in the decision-making process can be included to consider the different priorities on the criteria and the aggregation of evaluation of performances on such criteria.
Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods are excellent tools to compare alternatives comprehensively (with e.g., a ranking, a classification) and lead to a decision recommendation. Their power resides in their capacity to convey a wealth of information representing each alternative in the process of for example ranking them from the best to the worst or in the process of their classification (e.g., into good, medium, and bad classes).