Supporting Collaborative Multi-Criteria Evaluation: The VIP Analysis Plug-In for Decision Deck

This article presents the VIP Analysis plug-in of Decision Deck 1.1, a platform that hosts different evaluation methods to support decision makers in the collaborative evaluation of alternatives in a multi-criteria and multi-experts setting. VIP Analysis is a tool for aggregation of multicriteria performances by means of an additive value function under imprecise information. It allows conducting a multicriteria analysis for selecting an alternative when the decision makers are not able to (or do not wish to) fix precise values for the importance parameters. These parameters are seen as variables that may take several values subject to constraints. VIP Analysis incorporates different methods to support the progressive reduction of the number of alternatives, introducing a concept of tolerance that lets decision makers use some of the methods in a more flexible manner. When compared with the original standalone VIP Analysis (programmed in the late 1990s) the main innovation of the VIP Analysis plug-in is to allow several users working on the same problem under different roles: coordinator, evaluator, and decision-maker, thus defining a workflow process and enabling concurrent and remote access to the data over a network. By being included in the Decision Deck platform, VIP Analysis is now integrated with other decision aiding methods within a coherent interface. A final advantage is that the platform is open-source, which facilitates customization and collaborative improvement of the software.