Insert the title here - EVUR - TU Berlin

sound evaluation of energy systems grew significantly. Sustainable development claims that
at least the economic, ecological and social impacts of an activity are considered equally. 1
For sustainable development within energy supply energy systems have to be looked at from
different disciplines as to incorporate all the consequences brought along with their
implementation. This approach makes an evaluation of energy systems more complex. In
addition to that participation of stakeholders becomes more important as energy systems face
an increasing opposition of the public. Not only decentralized energy systems like wind
power plants have to deal with problems of acceptance. In Germany utilities are struggling
with approval processes from local governments as the public offers resistance to the building
of new central power plants. Therefore, participation of stakeholders in decision processes of
new energy systems is necessary for the success and stability of energy systems. As energy
issues are usually complex, dynamic, dealing with uncertainty and different stakeholders,
there is a need for new decision tools such as multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA)
(Loken07).
But how widespread are MCDA methods for energy decisions already? In this paper a review
of the recent literature is published to analyse the potential of MCDA for real world
applications. A classification is presented to indicate trends and challenges.
Multi criteria decision making or analysis is a generic term used for methods that help people
to make decisions in cases when there is a trade off between conflicting criteria (Loken07).
Multi criteria methods have been developed in the discipline of “Operations Research” which
is part of applied mathematics. Literature offers different appellations that are sometimes used
simultaneously. Therefore, a short description of differences is given below.
There are two main groups of multi criteria methods that are distinguished
(Zimmermann1991):
• In Multi Criteria Decision Analysis or Making (MCDA/MCDM) there exist a limited
amount of previously known alternatives that have to be evaluated and ranked.
Depending on the method applied a complete or a partial ranking can be achieved.
• In Multi Objective Decision Making (MODM) an optimal solution will be calculated
out of a set of unlimited feasible alternatives. The alternatives are not predetermined
but instead a set of functions is optimised subject to certain conditions. Here the best
solution is sought.
Since the origin of Multi Criteria Decision Making in the 1960s two main schools have
evolved that underline different approaches and methods:
• “European School” with the approach of “Multi Criteria Decision Aid”(MCDA)
• “American School” with the approach of “Multi Criteria Decision Making” (MCDM)
The principle of MCDM is based on clear preferences of an unspecified decision maker. A
clear structured optimisation problem will be solved with a mathematical process (Omann04).
MCDA compared to MCDM gives more importance to the process of decision aiding than on
1
There are different approaches available. For further information compare (Kopfmüller00), (Empacher99),
(Omann00)