We are dealing in this book with a nonvacuous problem: many difficult, real-world decision problems do involve multiple objectives. Consequently, many of the concepts we have introduced are relevant and must be applied in either a formal or informal analysis of the alternatives. If we choose to analyze multiple objectives and value or utility tradeoffs in a formal manner, then we immodestly believe that the ideas and procedures discussed in this book can often be of considerable use. This chapter and Chapter 8 support this contention by illustrating many cases where multiattribute preferences have been formalized. This chapter, in a variety of settings, focuses exclusively on the preference assessments themselves whereas Chapter 8, which concerns the site selection of an airport for Mexico City, presents a complete case including probability assessments, analysis of alternatives, interactions with the decision makers, and so on, as well as multiattribute preference assessments.

The applications discussed in this chapter cover the range of topics presented in Chapters 2-6. Section 7.1 discusses the generation of objectives and the specification of measures of effectiveness for an air pollution problem. Section 7.2 discusses the allocation of resources for an educational program and the value functions of the members of a local school board and other local education officials are formalized. Next, a five-attribute Utility function for response times of various fire trucks is assessed.