The AHP, developed by Saaty (1980), is a multiobjective
decision-making methodology. The AHP
enables decision makers to structure a complex
problem in the form of a simple hierarchy and to
evaluate a large number of quantitative and
qualitative factors in a systematic way under
conflicting multiple criteria. This decision-making
approach is mainly applied to decision problems
with several evaluation norms under uncertain
circumstances. It is a flexible and powerful tool for
handling both qualitative and quantitative multicriteria
problems (Carlucci and Schiuma, 2006). The
AHP is aimed at integrating different measures into
a single overall score for ranking decision alternatives.
Its main characteristic is that it is based on
pair-wise comparison judgments.