Decision modelling of diversified project selection

A decision model for a multi-criterion, multi-decision-maker project selection problem with equilibrium conditions (MPSE) is presented. Here, the equilibrium conditions are the requirements to balance some specific interests among different groups. We first change MPSE into a single-criterion, single-decision-maker project selection problem with equilibrium conditions (SPSE). Then we model SPSE as an integer programming problem and solve it with existing software. It is pointed out that SPSE is polynomially solvable when the number of equilibrium conditions is no more than two, otherwise SPSE is NP-hard. The proposed method is successfully applied to solve a real-world charity project selection problem. We have also tested the proposed method on randomly generated MPSE instances. Experimental results seem to indicate that our method can solve MPSE routinely on a personal computer for up to 150 projects and 5 equilibrium conditions. © J.C. Baltzer AG, Science Publishers