%0 Research article
%T Outranking methods as tools in strategic natural resources planning
%A Kangas, Annika
%A Kangas, Jyrki
%A Pykäläinen, Jouni
%D 2001
%J Silva Fennica
%V 35
%N 2
%R doi:10.14214/sf.597
%U https://silvafennica.fi/article/597
%X Two outranking methods, ELECTRE III and PROMETHEE II, commonly used as  decision-aid in various environmental problems, and their applications  to decision support for natural resources management are presented.  These methods represent ‘the European school’ of multi-criteria decision  making (MCDM), as opposed to ‘the American school’, represented by, for  instance, the AHP method. On the basis of a case study, outranking  methods are compared to so far more usually applied techniques based on  the ideas of multi attribute utility theory (MAUT). The outranking  methods have been recommended for situations where there is a finite  number of discrete alternatives to be chosen among. The number of  decision criteria and decision makers may be large. An important  advantage of outranking methods, when compared to decision support  techniques most often applied in today’s natural resources management,  is the ability to deal with ordinal and more or less descriptive  information on the alternative plans to be evaluated. Furthermore, the  uncertainty concerning the values of the criterion variables can be  taken into account using fuzzy relations, determined by indifference and  preference thresholds. The difficult interpretation of the results, on  the other hand, is the main drawback of the outranking methods.