This special issue (Vol. 43-2) of the Journal of Advanced Transportation (JAT) focused on: "MULTIPLE CRITERIA EVALUATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS" contains the first portion of 5 articles accepted for publication. The second portion composed of another set of 5 papers will be published in an upcoming issue. All the accepted manuscripts present different methodological tools, decision making models and computational algorithms that are applied for multiple criteria evaluation and optimization of transportation systems. They provide high quality, original contribution to both theory and practice of transportation research. They deal with analysis, design, economics, engineering, operations, planning and technology of different transportation modes (urban, road, rail, air, sea and intermodal). They also prove how powerful and popular is the Multiple Criteria Decision Making (Aiding) -MCDM(A) methodology.
The pioneer research in MCDM(A) dates back to 1950-s. Hundreds of papers and conference presentations on MCDM(A) have been published since then. Many methodological tools, decision making algorithms and computer -based systems have been designed and constructed within this field. Two major methodological streams of MCDM(A), represented by the European and American Schools have been developed. Those schools are based on Outranking Relation and Multi Attribute Utility Theory, respectively. Today MCDM(A) is a mature and still dynamically developing research field. It focuses on the design and development of advanced tools and methods that provide support to the Decision Maker in solving complex decision problems in which several, usually contradictory, points of view must be taken into account. As proven by this special issue MCDM(A) is also very popular in Transportation.
37 full -length manuscripts were submitted for publication in this special issue of JAT. The authors of the papers represented 21 countries