Decision under risk as a multicriteria problem

Most of the approaches to decision problems under uncertainty are based on decision paradigms, generally associated to an optimization process that leads to a final solution. For the Decision Maker, the basic decision is thus what paradigm to choose, the rest of the procedure being mainly technical.In this paper, a different approach is advocated for this kind of problems. The main idea is to leave prescriptive models in favor of a more flexible approach, where risk related criteria are explicitly considered, conducting to an “equivalent” multicriteria (deterministic) model where decision-aid procedures can be used, with a greater involvement of the Decision Maker.The paper discusses first the uncertainty model and then reviews existing paradigms for the single criterion problem under uncertainty. Proposed risk and opportunity attributes come mainly from the analysis of those methodologies and from risk perception studies reports.Some hints about multicriteria aid methods and an illustrative example complete the paper.