A Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis Framework for Dispersed Group Decision-Making Contexts

Abstract

To support Group Decision-Making processes when participants are dispersed is a complex task. The biggest challenges are related to communication limitations that impede decision-makers to take advantage of the benefits associated with face-to-face Group Decision-Making processes. Several approaches that intend to aid dispersed groups attaining decisions have been applied to Group Decision Support Systems. However, strategies to support decision-makers in reasoning, understanding the reasons behind the different recommendations, and promoting the decision quality are very limited. In this work, we propose a Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis Framework that intends to overcome those limitations through a set of functionalities that can be used to support decision-makers attaining more informed, consistent, and satisfactory decisions. These functionalities are exposed through a microservice, which is part of a Consensus-Based Group Decision Support System and is used by autonomous software agents to support decision-makers according to their specific needs/interests. We concluded that the proposed framework greatly facilitates the definition of important procedures, allowing decision-makers to take advantage of deciding as a group and to understand the reasons behind the different recommendations and proposals.