4.3. Multicriteria analysis
In this application the adopted multicriteria analysis tool is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) proposed by Saaty (1980). The AHP may aid the decision maker to set priorities and make the best decision by reducing complex decisions to a series of pairwise comparisons, and then synthesizing the results.
The AHP considers a set of criteria, and a set of alternative options among which the best decision is to be made. A weight is generated for each criterion based on the decision maker's pairwise comparisons of the criteria. The higher the weight, the more important the corresponding criterion. Next, for a fixed criterion, relative scores are attributed to the alternatives with the same pairwise comparison mechanism. The higher the score, the better the performance with respect to the considered criterion. Finally, the AHP combines the weights and the scores, thus determining a global score for each option, and a consequent ranking. The global score for a given option is a weighted sum of the scores it obtained with respect to the single criteria.