Many complex decision problems involve multiple conflicting objectives. It is often true that no dominant alternative will exist that is better than all other alternatives in terms of all of these objectives. Perhaps some of the original alternatives can be eliminated from further consideration because they are dominated, but generally you simply cannot maximize several objectives simultaneously. You cannot maximize benefits and at the same time minimize costs; you cannot necessarily maximize yield and minimize risk; nor can you share a pie by giving the maximum amount to each child. The literature is replete with high-sounding rhetoric where an advocate cries out for doing “best” for everybody, in every possible way, in the shortest time, with the least inconvenience, and with the maximum security for all. Ah, for the simplicity of the romanticist's dream world!

THE MULTIATTRIBUTE VALUE PROBLEM

Our problem is one of value tradeoffs. In this chapter we see what can be done about systematically structuring such tradeoffs. In essence, the decision maker is faced with a problem of trading off the achievement of one objective against another objective. If there is no uncertainty in the problem, if we know the multiattribute consequence of each alternative, the essence of the issue is, “How much achievement on objective 1 is the decision maker willing to give up in order to improve achievement on objective 2 by some fixed amount?” If there is uncertainty in the problem, the tradeoff issue remains, but difficulties are compounded because it is not clear what the consequences of each of the alternatives will be.