Annibal Parracho Sant’Anna

Sustainability assessment and prioritisation of e-waste management options in Brazil

Brazil has an increasing rate of e-waste generation, but there are currently few adequate management systems in operation, with the largest share of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) going to landfill sites or entering informal chains. The National Solid Waste Policy (2010) enforces the implementation of reverse logistics systems under the shared responsibility of consumers, companies and governments. The objective of this paper is to assess sustainability and prioritise system alternatives for potential implementation in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro. Sustainability criteria and decision alternatives were defined by elicitation of stakeholders. The adopted multicriteria approach combines Life Cycle Assessment with qualitative evaluations by a small sample of regional experts with knowledge of the problem. The recommended system consists of a hybrid WEEE collection scheme with delivery points at shops, metro stations and neighbourhood centres; a pre-treatment phase with the involvement of private companies, cooperatives and social enterprises; and full recycling of all components in the country.

Probabilistic composition in quality management in the retail trade sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the application of a method for combining multiple criteria based on the transformation of numerical evaluations into probabilities of preference. It is applied to compare failure risks and to measure efficiency in the retail trade sector. Design/methodology/approach – The main conceptual aspect of the method employed is taking into account uncertainty. Its other important feature is allowing for the combination of evaluations in terms of joint probabilities. This avoids the need of assigning weights to the criteria. In the context of failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) it provides a probabilistic derivation for priority scores. An application of FMEA to the sector of services is discussed. Another area of application investigated is the assessment of efficiency. Findings – Details of the application of the probabilistic composition in the evaluation of modes of failure and in the comparison of operational efficiencies of retail stores are evidenced....

A PROBABILISTIC APPROACH APPLIED TO THE CLASSIFICATION OF COURSES BY MULTIPLE EVALUATORS

How to measure the perceived influence of a course on its alumni skills? This paper describes the use of CPP-TRI as a tool to face this problem. The method was applied here in the context of a M.Sc. course evaluation. Levels of impact and importance previously determined for different features provide the framework for the analysis. Classifications by different groups of evaluators are combined. Taking into account the subjectivity in the assessments, CPP-TRI treats them as realizations of random variables. The combination of the evaluations is performed by computing joint probabilities, what avoids the assignment of weights to evaluators. Interval classifications between a hostile and a benevolent limit are provided offerings the educational evaluator a deeper understanding of the results. An additional study is here performed on the classification of the features. A total of sixteen features are sorted.

Beta Distributed Preferences in the Comparison of Failure Modes

Abstract The Composition of Probabilistic Preferences (CPP) is employed here to combine evaluations of a set of factors determined by adding human reliability criteria to the traditional FMEA criteria. The risks according to each of nine criteria are evaluated for ten failure modes by a set of seven evaluators. The probabilistic transformation of CPP employs a beta distribution, whose parameters are estimated on the basis of the means and modes of the samples of seven evaluation values. In the case studied, higher discrimination is provided by the use of the sample means.

Computation of Probabilities of Preference

The starting point to the computation of preferences by multiple criteria are vectors of objective measurements of attributes of the alternatives or evaluations in a Likert scale, or even approximate rankings. These initial values are treated as location parameters of probability distributions, for instance as modes of triangular distributions or means of normal distributions. For each criterion, the probability of a realization of the distribution representing each alternative being the best in a sample can then be computed. The final score of an alternative is obtained combining its multiple probabilities of being the best.

A Probabilistic Approach to the Evaluation and Combination of Preferences

model for the process of evaluating and combining preferences is here proposed. After determining the preferences according to each criterion, these partial preferences are combined into global ones. Different combination rules are set, in a probabilistic framework. Attention is centered to the case of indicators measured in different levels of aggregation.

Descent Rules for Championships

This article proposes alternative classification rules for the clubs in the Brazilian Soccer Championship employing Rough Sets Theory. A feature of the procedure adopted to determine the rough sets is that it allows for attributes associated to intransitive relations. One of such attributes is the result of direct confrontation. The classification procedure follows three stages. First, the condition attributes are ranked according to their importance for the official classification on points. Then the condition attributes are sequentially applied to generate a classification. Finally the result of this sequential classification is compared to the decision partition. The results obtained for different sets of attributes and different years are consistent, with the number of distinct classes obtained increasing with the quality of approximation.

A PROBABILISTIC APPROACH TO THE INEQUALITY ADJUSTMENT OF THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX

The Composition of Probabilistic Preferences is here applied to combine eight indicators of human development. The four components of HDI are considered together with indices of inequality in longevity, schooling, and income, and the UNDP Gender Development Index. To compose the probabilities of preference by the different criteria, a pessimistic and conservative point of view is taken. This point of view, while generating the global score, results in employing for each option the probability of not presenting the lowest evaluation according to any criterion, increasing the importance assigned in the computations to the proximity to the frontier of worst performances. Alternative rankings of the 188 countries ranked in the 2015 and the 2016 Human Development Report are obtained. Capacities allowing for interactions between up to eight components are employed. Representative profiles of ordered classes are derived from the rankings. Classifications of the countries into previously determined classes are also performed.

MULTICRITERIA ANALYSIS OF FOOTBALL MATCH PERFORMANCES: COMPOSITION OF PROBABILISTIC PREFERENCES APPLIED TO THE ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE 2015/2016

Principe, V., Gaviao, L. O., Henriques, R., Lobo, V., Lima, G. B. A., & Sant’anna, A. P. (2017). Multicriteria analysis of football match performances: Composition of probabilistic preferences applied to the English premier league 2015/2016. Pesquisa Operacional, 37(2), 333-363. https://doi.org/10.1590/0101-7438.2017.037.02.0333

Approaches to Criteria Combination

Two main approaches to consider the importance of the criteria in a multicriteria decision may be employed. The preferences according to each of them may be combined into a global preference by a weighted average where the importance of the criteria enters separately as weights. Otherwise the interaction between the evaluations by the multiple criteria must be taken into account when combining them and the importance of sets of criteria taken together must be computed. A simple procedure to determine the importance in the first case can be based on pairwise comparison of the criteria. A procedure to compute the importance of the sets of criteria to apply the Choquet integral in the second case may be based on pairwise comparison of preferences between distributions of probability on the space of criteria.