Fuzzy Outranking Methods Including Fuzzy PROMETHEE

Outranking methods are a family of techniques concerned with ranking the preference for alternatives based on the criteria values that describe them. The breadth of applications taking inference from such preference ranking analysis includes the areas of business, health, environment, marketing, and public services. In the context of databases, the ranking issue is closely associated with data retrieval, including the ranking of matches to queries. This chapter describes the rudiments of fuzzy outranking methods, with particular attention to one such approach, namely fuzzy PROMETHEE, compounded further with the different structures of defined fuzziness of the criteria values also considered. Alternative fuzzy PROMETHEE approaches are described, with one used in two real-life applications. The results presented, with emphasis on their graphical representation, offer insights into the appropriate application of such fuzzy outranking methods.