Membership function elicitation in possibilistic programming problems

In this paper, we propose an elicitation method for membership functions in the setting of possibilistic programming. Each possibility distribution is defined by several possible domains with different possibility degrees. Taking advantage of the properties of possibility and necessity measures, a nested target table for the objective function and for each constraint is elicited from a decision maker. To aggregate all the goals, an additional nested target table is established. Through those nested target tables, membership functions can be determined. It is emphasized that the information of nested target tables is much more important than that of membership values in the setting of possibilistic programming. The membership functions in possibilistic programming are not assumed to be cardinal but ordinal. In this sense, the decision making via possibilistic programming can be regarded as a qualitative one. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.