SMAA-Based FITradeoff: An Efficient Framework for Pairwise Elicitation in Multicriteria Decision Analysis

The Flexible and Interactive Tradeoff Elicitation (FITradeoff) method is a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) approach designed to capture the preferences of a Decision Maker (DM) while minimising cognitive effort. To reduce the frequency of interactions and optimise the preference elicitation process, this paper introduces an innovative FITradeoff method integrated with Stochastic Multi-Attribute Acceptability Analysis-2 (SMAA-2). The proposed method follows six steps: (1) It identifies the central weight vectors of each potentially optimal alternative obtained through SMAA-2. (2) It formulates pairwise tradeoffs based on their ratios and selects the most informative ones based on their probability of identifying potentially optimal alternatives. (3) It selects the most informative pairwise tradeoff and its ratio based on the minimum number of potentially optimal alternatives. (4) It engages the DM to express a preference relation. (5) It constructs an updated weight space with the identified pairwise tradeoff constraint and iterates the previous steps until an optimal alternative is identified. (6) A Genetic Algorithm-based Linear Programming (GA-based LP) model is developed to evaluate the robustness and efficiency of our approach. To prove the feasibility and validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a case study on the selection of Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) is conducted. Additionally, a comparative analysis with the traditional FITradeoff method is included; the results demonstrate that the proposed method identifies the optimal solution while reducing the DM's cognitive burden, highlighting its potential to improve decision-making processes.