Introduction to the analytic hierarchy process (Q486481)

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a method of decision making in complex problems related to a finite number of alternatives. The main idea is to decompose the complex decision making problem in question into a hierarchical set of alternatives and assess the feasible decisions, using pairwise comparisons of the alternatives. The author formulates the concept of the basic version of AHP as follows: ``A single decision maker is perfectly rational and can express his preferences on all pairs of independent alternatives and criteria using positive real numbers.'' Apart from the basic version, other versions of AHP are considered relaxing some assumptions of the basic version. The book consists of 4 chapters, conclusions, two appendices, and a list of 141 references. In the first chapter `Introduction and fundamentals', the place of AHP in the intersection of operations research and decision analysis is discussed, and the prerequisites of its application are formulated. The role of information elicitation in the form of a pairwise comparison matrix, and of the reduction of the elicited information to a priority vector is explained. In the second chapter, the computation of the priority vector as the eigenvector of the pairwise comparison matrix is substantiated and compared with a few alternative methods of definition of the priority vector. A comparison matrix, obtained in a practical decision making problem, frequently deviates from the theoretical model, and such a deviation is called an inconsistency; several indices of the inconsistency are defined and discussed. In the third chapter, the AHP method is extended to the problems of missing comparisons and group decisions. Finally, in the fourth chapter, the equivalence of some versions of AHP methods is shown and the main generalizations of AHP are outlined. The generalisations considered are related to the uncertainty of comparisons which can be expressed in the terms of fuzzy numbers and intervals. The first appendix briefly introduces the eigenvectors and eigenvalues, and in the second appendix the solutions of exercises are provided.