MCDM

International Society on
Multiple Criteria Decision Making

Business Meetings of the Society

This is a collection of the latest Business Meetings of the International Society on MCDM.

Chengdu 2009
Auckland 2008
Chania 2006
Whistler 2004
Semmering 2002
Ankara 2000

Chengdu 2009

Business Meeting, Report of the Proceedings

June 23, 2009, Chengdu, China

Jyrki Wallenius chaired the meeting. (The number of members of the Society attending the meeting was about 90.)

To begin with, Jyrki Wallenius, the President of the Society, informed about the new domain name for the Society webpage: www.mcdmsociety.org. He reminded that the Society has no membership fees and wished new members welcome. Those who are interested in becoming a member of the Society are asked to go to the members section of the webpage, and submit the application form. Current members can also update their data on this site. It is especially important to have a valid email address.

For Report

Secretary of the Society
Prof. Jyrki Wallenius introduced Francisco Ruiz, the Secretary of the Society.
Elections related to open offices: four positions in the Executive Committee
Prof. Kaisa Miettinen has chaired the Elections Committee. Besides the candidates nominated by the Committee, the members of the Society were able to nominate candidates.

There are eleven candidates for the four vacancies in the Executive Committee: in alphabetical order Dick Deckro, Jim Dyer, Matthias Ehrgott, Jose Figueira, Murat Köksalan, Gang Kou, Asim Roy, Roman Słowinski, Ilker Topku, Margaret Wiecek and Eckart Zizler.

The voting will be electronic, as in the previous elections. The members of the Society will receive further information about the voting procedure by email before the elections, which will take place in August 2009. All those who were members of the Society before the conference or joined before the end of July 2009, can vote. The voting will be an approval voting.

The next MCDM conference
In its meeting on Monday June 22, 2009, the Executive Committee accepted the proposal to organize the next MCDM conference in 2011 in Jyväskylä, Finland by Kaisa Miettinen. Jyrki Wallenius and Pekka Korhonen will be the chairs of the program committee. The conference will take place on June 13-17, 2011 Further details can be found in the webpage of the conference: http://www.jyu.fi/mcdm2011 .
Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis
Prof. Jyrki Wallenius reported about the new editorial actions currently being taken in the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. Prof. Theo Stewart has been appointed editor-in-chief of the journal, and he has appointed more area editors. All researchers are encouraged to submit high quality papers, in order to support the journal in this new stage.
Upcoming Summer School
Prof. Jyrki Wallenius announced that the 10th MCDA Summer school, organized jointly by the EURO Working Group (EWG) on MCDA and the Society, will take place at the Ecole Centrale Paris, June 27th - July 8th, 2010, chaired by Vincent Mousseau.
Conference Proceedings
Finally, Jyrki Wallenius informed that there will be several special issues containing papers presented at the conference. Further details will be given after the conference banquet.

Jyrki Wallenius welcomed the input from the members of the Society.

Auckland 2008

Business Meeting, Report of the Proceedings

January 10, 2008, Auckland, New Zealand

Theodor Stewart chaired the meeting. (The number of members of the Society attending the meeting was about 40.)

To begin with, Prof. Theodor Stewart, the President of the Society, reminded that the Society has no membership fees and wished new members welcome. Those who are interested in becoming a member of the Society are asked to contact the secretary of the Society, Prof. Kaisa Miettinen.

For Report

Elections related to open offices: President-Elect and four positions in the Executive Committee
Prof. Jyrki Wallenius has chaired the Elections Committee. Besides the candidates nominated by the Committee, the members of the Society were able to nominate candidates.

There are four candidates as President-Elect: (Matthias Ehrgott, Murat M. Köksalan, Kaisa Miettinen and Constantin Zopounidis). There are seven candidates for the four vacancies in the Executive Committee (James Corner, Kalyanmoy Deb, Xavier Gandibleux, Gilberto Montibeller, Jose Maria Moreno, Serpil Sayin and Tetsuzo Tanino).

The voting will be electronic (Jyrki Wallenius and Kaisa Miettinen will take care of practical arrangements). The members of the Society will receive further information about the voting procedure by email in February 2008. All those who were members of the Society before the conference or joined before the end of January 2008, can vote. The voting will be an approval voting, as before.

The President of the Society also announced the following: - Prof. Birsen Karpak has agreed to continue as the Vice-President of Finance because the Society has had no finances up to now. - Dr. Martin Josef Geiger has agreed to continue as the Newsletter Editor. - The Executive Committee appointed Prof. Kaisa Miettinen to continue as the secretary in its meeting on Wednesday, January 9, 2008.

On-going conference

Matthias Ehrgott presented outlines of the on-going conference including statistics indicating that participants from 46 countries had registered for the conference, 21 of them from New Zealand, 12 from Taiwan, 11 from Australia, 9 from Finland etc. Proceedings will be published by Springer in the series Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems. The deadline for submitting papers of maximum 10 pages is the end of March, 2008. In particular, papers related to the conference theme are most welcome. The editors will be Matthias Ehrgott, Boris Naujoks, Theodor Stewart and Jyrki Wallenius. Formatting instructions will be announced shortly. The referee process should be finished by the end of 2008. Further instructions will be sent by email to all conference participants. 8 papers in the EMO track have already been refereed before the conference and they will be included in the proceedings.

The next MCDM conference

In its meeting on Wednesday 9, 2008, the Executive Committee (conditionally) accepted the proposal to organize the next MCDM conference in the northern summer 2009 in Chengdu, China by Yong Shi and Shouyang Wang. Details (including exact dates, venue etc.) will be worked through later by Jyrki Wallenius and the conference organizers. Yong Shi gave a brief presentation of the conference arrangements and location.

Electronic newsletter

The major functions of the Society are conferences every two years. Another important activity is the electronic newsletter which is published three times a year. Dr. Martin Josef Geiger, the Newsletter Editor, pointed out that the newsletter has concentrated on announcements of news. However, it would be good to start collecting reports on interesting projects or activities including results of practical applications. It could be beneficial to collect short reports (which are not scientifically written) about where MCDM/MCDA has been used and what has been achieved. He welcomed such reports.

Wiley prize

Prof. Valerie Belton gave information about the Wiley prize. The procedure will be the same as in the previous conference in Chania. The Wiley prize (USD 1000) is presented at each conference of the Society. The criteria (partly established by Wiley) include quality of application, quality of presentation, innovation as well as reflection on learning from application. Everyone who has presented an application-oriented paper in the conference is invited to submit a paper. Matthias Ehrgott has agreed to edit a special issue for the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis consisting of Wiley prize finalists. The deadline is the same as for the conference proceedings. The winner will be announced before the next MCDM conference. The papers will be published in 12-15 months.

Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

All registered participants of the MCDM2008 Conference will get an electronic access to the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (JMCDA) for 2 years.

Valerie Belton, editor of JMCDA, told that there has been some struggle with the journal for a number of years because there have not been submissions enough. Tentative discussions have been started with the EMO community of forming a joint issue of some kind. The name of the journal should be reconsidered. The aim is to bring MCDM and EMO communities together. The goal is that the journal in a new form could initiate in 2009. Valerie Belton will first contact Wiley and discussions will be continued jointly with Jyrki Wallenius (who will represent the Society). Valerie Belton welcomed submissions as well as proposals to edit special issues on any aspect of multiple criteria decision analysis, including tutorials and review papers.

Membership directory and web site

Kaisa Miettinen forwarder information from Prof. Rudolf Vetschera that the server of the website http://orgwww.bwl.univie.ac.at/mcdm, where the members of the Society can update their membership information has been broken. Members are asked to send updated contact information to Kaisa Miettinen until a new server is set up. She reminded members to update their contact information to make sure that they will receive email from the Society.

Kaisa Miettinen also asked members to send ideas and suggestions of how to improve the website of the Society. Furthermore, Xavier Gandibleux announced that the application repository (which he has maintained) has been unavailable for some time but will become active soon.

International Summer Schools

Three recognizable societies, EURO Working Group (EWG) on MCDA, International Society on MCDM and ESIGMA initiated a system of organizing International Summer Schools every 2 or 3 years. They had an agreement to have a steering committee with 2 members from each. Now ESIGMA has deceased. In its meeting yesterday, the Executive Committee designated Theodor Stewart and Benedetto Matarazzo as the representatives of the Society. They will contact EWG and try to activate the summer schools tradition. Yong Shi mentioned in his talk that there will be a 2-day workshop preceding the actual MCDM conference in 2009 (but this will not be called a summer school).

Finally

Theodor Stewart expressed his thanks to the Executive Committee and then called Jyrki Wallenius to take over as the President of the Society.

The new President of the Society, Jyrki Wallenius, thanked Theodor Stewart for his efforts for the Society. He promised to try to be an active president. The field has experienced tremendous growth: 800 ISI-cited publications are published every year that fit keywords multiattribute and multiobjective. The problem of growth is the fragmentation of the field: there are different schools that do not necessarily sufficiently interact. As a new President, Jyrki Wallenius sees his role in building bridges between the schools. He would also like to attract younger people to the Society and involve them in its activities. He welcomed input and ideas from others.

Chania 2006

Business Meeting, Report of the Proceedings

June 21, 2006, Chania, Greece

Theo Stewart chaired the meeting. (The number of members of the Society attending the meeting was about 80.)

For Report

Elections related to four vacant positions in the Executive Committee
Jyrki Wallenius chaired the Elections Committee.

There are nine candidates (Ami Arbel, Fouad Ben Abdelhaziz, Luiz F. Autran M. Gomes, Salvatore Greco, Jacinto Gonzalez-Pachon, Kathrin Klamroth, Antonie Stam, Daniel Vanderpooten, Luis Vargas) for the four posts in the Executive Committee. The Elections Committee nominated five candidates and four more candidates were nominated by the Members of the Society in the Conference.

The voting will be electronic. The members of the Society will receive further information about the voting procedure by email. All those who were members of the Society before the conference or joined before end of July can vote.

Next Conference
The next International Conference on MCDM, MCDM2008, will be organized in New Zealand. The dates of the conference have not been fixed yet. The conference may take place at the end of year 2007 or at the beginning of 2008. In any case, the idea is to organize the conference during the summer time of New Zealand.

Whistler 2004

Business Meeting, Report of the Proceedings

August 11, 2004, Whistler, Canada

(The number of members of the Society attending the meeting was about 80.)

For Report

Elections related to President-Elect, Vice-President of Finance and four vacant positions in the Executive Committee
Theo Stewart chaired the Elections Committee.

There are two candidates as President-Elect (Carlos A. Bana e Costa and Jyrki Wallenius).

Birsen Karpak was the only candidate as Vice-President of Finance and, thus, she was selected for the term 2004-2008.

There are sixteen candidates (Belaid Aouni, Emilio Carrizosa, Carlos A. Bana e Costa, Jose R. M. Figueira, Xavier Gandibleux, Sy-Ming Guu, Luis Autran Gomes, Gilberto Montibeller, Hirotaka Nakayama, Wlodzimierz Ogryczak, Mark Ridgley, Serpil Sayin, Mehrdad Tamiz, Rudolf Vetschera, Alexey B. Petrovsky, Anatoly Levchenkov) for the four posts in the Executive Committee. The Elections Committee nominated 12 candidates and four more candidates were nominated by the Members of the Society in the Conference.

The voting will be electronic. The members of the Society will receive further information about the voting procedure by email. All those who were members of the Society before the conference or joined during the conference can vote.

Next Conferences
The next International Conference on MCDM, MCDM2006, will be organized in Chania, Crete. The dates of the conference have not been fixed yet. Opinions about the suitability of different dates were cursorily asked in the meeting. There were about 10 members present for whom April would be problematic and late June was problematic for about the same number of people. Late July or early August seemed to be least problematic with a few members opposing.

As far as MCDM2008 is concerned, informal suggestions have been received from New Zealand, Taiwan and Germany. The decision will be made during the next year.

Newsletter
The newsletter of the Society has been published in an electronic form since the last conference in Semmering and Gilberto Montibeller and Valerie Belton have managed it temporarily. The new newsletter editor is Martin Geiger (his term being 2004-2008). It is possible to form an editorial team to gather information about conferences, books, etc. Members are welcome to express their interest if they would like to contribute.

For discussion

  • PhD Workshop: The idea of a PhD Workshop was discussed in the previous Business Meeting two years ago but it has not been organized yet. It could be useful for the society in building networks. The workshop could be more research focused than the summer school. Ideas and opinions of the members are welcome.
  • Enhancing the web page: Vincent Mousseau has collected references (in bibtex format) that deal with MCDA. They are available online at http://www.lamsade.dauphine.fr/mcda/biblio/ The possibility of extending this to include references on other branches of MCDM should be studied. In addition, a collection of MCDM applications as well as a collection of sites with self-learning material and other course material on MCDM would be useful. Volunteers are welcome.
  • Other topics: Mark Ridgley raised the idea of arranging conferences that are more like workshops with an equal number of academicians and practitioners participating.

    Semmering 2002

    Business Meeting, Report of the Proceedings

    February 21, 2002, Semmering, Austria

    (The number of members of the Society attending the meeting was about 40.)

    For Report

    Elections related to four vacant positions in the Executive Committee
    There are nine candidates (Jyrki Wallenius, Oleg Larichev, Joao Climaco, Carlos Romero, Sydney Chu, Serpil Sayin, Jacques Teghem, Matthias Ehrgott, Wlodzimier Ogryczak). Theo Steward chaired the Nominations Committee. They nominated seven candidates and two more candidates were nominated by the Members of the Society in the Conference.

    The voting will be electronic. The actual format of the voting will be fixed within a month. After that, all the members will receive an email message with details how to vote. The voting will be finished after the Easter.

    Awards committee
    Stan Zionts deserved thanks for his work as the Chairman of the Awards Committee for the past four years.

    Murat Köksalan is the new Chairman of the Awards Committee for the next four years. He will select six members of the Committee.

    Secretary
    Kaisa Miettinen was thanked for her work over the past 2 years and will continue as the Secretary of the Society for the next two years.

    For discussion

    Next Conference
    Newsletter
    Communicating with members
    Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis

    New initiatives

    No further topics for discussion were suggested.

    Ankara 2000

    Business Meeting, Report of the Proceedings

    July 13, 2000, Ankara, Turkey

    (The number of members of the Society attending the meeting was about 60)

    Announcements

    Ballot
    A new way of voting is used when electing President-Elect, Vice-President of Finance and four members of the Executive Committee. All the members of the Society (membership obtained before July 14, 2000) can cast their vote either electronically via the Internet or by airmail in the approval voting. Those whose email addresses are known will receive an email message containing username and password together with instructions. The others will receive a letter with instructions for voting by airmail. The deadline is September 15, 2000 (24.00 Finnish time).

    Nominees for President-Elect are Oleg Larichev and Theodor Stewart and nominees for Vice-President of Finance are Lorraine Gardiner and Ambrose Goicoechea. Nominees for the four vacant positions on the International Executive Committee are Per Agrell, Carlos Bana e Costa, John Buchanan, Leonardo Ensslin, Hirotaka Nakayama, Andrzej Jaszkiewicz, Mark Ridgley and Yong Shi.

    MCDM2002 Conference
    The MCDM2002 Conference will be arranged in Austria in January or February 2002 by Rudolf Vetschera and Mikulas Luptacik.
    The Society on the Internet
    The web site of the Society is located at http://www.terry.uga.edu/mcdm/

    Further announcements

    Last Reviewed:  August 25, 2009
    Francisco Ruiz (University of Málaga, Spain) Secretary (at) mcdmsociety.org