ABSTRACT
Course of action (COA) comparison is a critical step of the operation planning process whereby COAs are considered independently and evaluated against a set of criteria that are established by the staff and commander. The goal is to support the commander’s decision-making process by identifying and recommending the COA that best accomplishes the mission. However, the uncertainty associated with the evaluations of the COAs and the preferences make this decision process more complicated in real-world applications. This study proposes a multiple-criteria approach based on the SMAA-PROMETHEE method that can be practically implemented to COA comparison and selection. The SMAA-PROMETHEE method performs Monte-Carlo simulations and runs PROMETHEE as the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) method to investigate the robustness of COA rankings when input parameters are uncertain and incomplete. The main advantage of the approach is its ability to articulate to the commander why one COA is preferable to another by exploring the input parameter space that assigns a given COA to a certain rank. A case study is presented to demonstrate the robustness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
