In the week of 16 - 21 September, an international group of more than 50 scientists met at the Many Criteria Optimization and Decision Analysis (MACODA) workshop. They discussed many-criteria optimization, which is the searching for optimal solutions when one has to consider a larger number of criteria. The MACODA workshop was organized by the Lorentz Center and Michael Emmerich, associate professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS).
Traditional methods do not work
Many-criteria problems occur, for instance, in urban planning, drug discovery and in multidisciplinary engineering design. Implication of these problems with many criteria within traditional methods designed for problems with smaller numbers of objectives does not work. The problem with a larger number of objective functions, so-called many-objective problems, differ in their characteristics from problems with smaller numbers of objectives.
New research agenda
The workshop aimed to develop and disseminate a community-led research agenda for many-criteria optimization. By discussing and creating a research agenda the organizers hope for a step-change in the understanding of many-criteria optimization.
