Reversing the Perspective on the Applications of Decision Analysis (Comment on Keefer et al. 2004)

This paper looks into the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) of the field of the applications based on DA techniques; focusing especially on MAVT. The need for best practices and bias-resistant analysis procedures is pointed out. In most application papers there are no reports on the verification or testing of the procedures used. The Internet provides great opportunities in the delivery of DA software and e-learning material. Public sites such as Decisionarium (www.decisionarium.hut.fi) provide encouragement and a low entry level to try value tree analysis in new applications. There are also great opportunities in reaching out the other MCDA communities such as AHP practitioners. Today the need and demand for decision support is perhaps growing most rapidly in environmental problems. A clear trend is also the integration of DA into GIS and other models. Many of the applications are now published in non-OR/MS subject area journals.