Extensions of the prudence principle to exploit a valued outranking relation

In many outranking methods, the alternatives are first compared pairwise to build a valued outranking relation, which is then exploited to derive a recommendation for the decision maker. This paper proposes extensions of Arrow and Raynaud’s prudence principle to exploit a valued outranking relation, even in cases where the outranking values have an ordinal interpretation. The idea is to build a ranking that maximizes the weakest support for its implicit pairwise comparisons. We present a family of exploitation models providing three types of solutions, depending on the decision maker’s request: a linear order, a weak order, or a partial preorder. An algorithm is provided which solves the exploitation models. Relations between these models and some of their properties are also discussed.