Similarity of TOPSIS results based on criterion variability: Case study on public economic

Abstract

In the real world, acceptance of a decision is conditional on the availability of a great volume of data. Selection of a suitable solution on the basis of this data represents a problem that multi-criterial methods (MCDM) are applied to. The issue of which of these should be favoured during their use involves a specification of the importance of the assessed criteria. The goal of the presented research is to quantify the differences (symmetry) in assessment using selected MCDM methods (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution–TOPSIS), while applying an absolute and relative variability of the assessed criteria to a determination of their importance. The obtained results indicate that the order of the assessed subject (alternative) is not directly influenced by the method of determining the variability of the assessed criteria. We can also state that the degree of concurrence in the order of application of the TOPSIS technique, in combination with both approaches expressed by the Jaccard index, is relatively low.