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CDR Seminar: Salvatore Greco - The hierarchical-SMAA-Choquet integral to construct composite indicators

Date
Date
Wednesday 21 February 2018, 14:00 - 15:00
Location
Leeds University Business School, Maurice Keyworth Building, Room 1.33
Who can attend
Staff, students, alumni and external guests

Abstract

The evaluation of sustainable development – and, in particular, rural development – through composite indices requires taking into account a plurality of indicators, which are related to economic, social and environmental aspects. The points of view evaluated by these indices are naturally interacting: thus, a bonus has to be recognized to units performing well on synergic criteria, whereas a penalization has to be assigned on redundant criteria. An additional difficulty of the modelization is the elicitation of the parameters for the composite indices, since they are typically affected by some imprecision. In most approaches, all these critical points are usually neglected, which in turn yields an unpleasant degree of approximation in the computation of indices.

In this paper we propose a methodology that allows one to simultaneously handle these delicate issues. Specifically, to take into account synergy and redundancy between criteria, we suitably aggregate indicators by means of the Choquet integral. Further, to obtain recommendations that take into account the space of fluctuation related to imprecision in nonadditive weights (capacity of the Choquet integral), we adopt the Robust Ordinal Regression (ROR) and the Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA). Finally, to study sustainability not only at a comprehensive level (taking into account all criteria) but also at a local level (separately taking into account economic, social and environmental aspects), we apply the Multiple Criteria Hierarchy Process (MCHP). We illustrate the advantages of our approach in a concrete example, in which we measure the rural sustainability of 51 municipalities in the province of Catania, the largest city of the East Coast of Sicily (Italy).

About the speaker

Salvatore Greco was born in 1965. He received his degree from the Faculty of Economics of the University of Catania in 1988. He has been researcher of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Catania since 1994, associated professor since 1998 and full professor since 2001. He has been teaching Decision Theory, General Mathematics and Financial Mathematics. He has been the coordinator of the PhD in Mathematics for Decisions in Economics and Finance at the University of Catania.

Since 2013 Salvatore Greco has also a part time position at the Business School of Portsmouth University (UK). His research regards preference modeling and multiple criteria decision analysis with a specific attention to application of rough set theory. Together with Benedetto Matarazzo and Roman Slowinski, he proposed the Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA), which paved a new way of modeling preferences in Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), using logical “if…, then…” decision rules induced from rough approximations of decision maker’s judgments. Together with Roman Slowinski and other colleagues, he also proposed Robust Ordinal Regression (ROR), which permits to take into account the whole set of value functions representing the preference information elicited by the decision maker. He was working, moreover, on application of non-additive integrals to MCDM proposing, together with Benedetto Matarazzo and Silvio Giove, a new powerful generalization of the Choquet integral: the level dependent Choquet integral. He also made contributions to several other subfields of MCDM, ranging from axiomatization of aggregation procedures to coupling some MCDM methodologies (DRSA, ROR) with evolutionary multiobjective optimization methodologies, proposing DARWIN and NEMO methods. He has been presenting many invited lectures at international conferences, and he has published many articles in major international scientific journals. For his research on the rough set approach to the multiple criteria decision analysis he received, together Benedetto Matarazzo and Roman Slowinski, the best paper award for the best theoretical article presented at the Athens Conference of Decision Science Institute in 1999 (http://www.decisionsciences.org/recognition/hall.asp).

At the 22nd International conference on MCDM held in Malaga June 17-22 2013 (http://www.mcdm2013.decytec.ccee.uma.es/conference-organization/mcdm-society-awards.html), he received the MCDM Gold Medal being “the highest honor that the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making bestows upon a scholar who, over a distinguished career, has devoted much of his/her talent, time, and energy to advancing the field of MCDM, and who has markedly contributed to the theory, methodology, and practice of MCDM” (http://www.mcdmsociety.org/intro.html).