A multi-criteria approach to sort and rank policies based on Delphi qualitative assessments and ELECTRE TRI: The case of smart grids in Brazil

This work presents a methodology to perform a multi-criteria decision analysis based on qualitative assessments from multiple experts or stakeholders. The application that motivated these methodological developments is also described, consisting of an assessment of policies to foster technological innovations in the electricity sector, namely in a context of evolution to smart grids. Qualitative assessments were elicited from 28 experts using a Delphi process. The assessments concern the impact of policies on different objectives, but also opinions concerning the importance of these objectives. These opinions are translated into constraints on the weights of the corresponding criteria, in a partial information setting. Then, policies are sorted into categories based on a stochastic multi-criteria analysis for the ELECTRE TRI method. A new ranking approach is also developed to be compatible with the sorting results, based on a robustness analysis of ELECTRE TRI credibility indices. Results are discussed considering the entire set of experts and considering subsets of experts representing different perspectives. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.