Assessing the Performance of Interactive Multiobjective Optimization Methods

Abstract

Interactive methods are useful decision-making tools for multiobjective optimization problems, because they allow a decision-maker to provide her/his preference information iteratively in a comfortable way at the same time as (s)he learns about all different aspects of the problem. A wide variety of interactive methods is nowadays available, and they differ from each other in both technical aspects and type of preference information employed. Therefore, assessing the performance of interactive methods can help users to choose the most appropriate one for a given problem. This is a challenging task, which has been tackled from different perspectives in the published literature. We present a bibliographic survey of papers where interactive multiobjective optimization methods have been assessed (either individually or compared to other methods). Besides other features, we collect information about the type of decision-maker involved (utility or value functions, artificial or human decision-maker), the type of preference information provided, and aspects of interactive methods that were somehow measured. Based on the survey and on our own experiences, we identify a series of desirable properties of interactive methods that we believe should be assessed.