Talk:Analytic hierarchy process/More Hierarchies

Some more complex hierarchies

This section shows two AHP hierarchies that are more complex than those in the main article.

Buying an automobile

In an AHP hierarchy for a decision about buying a vehicle, the goal might be to choose the best car for the Jones family. The family might decide to consider cost, safety, style, and capacity as the criteria for making their decision. They might subdivide the cost criterion into purchase price, fuel costs, maintenance costs, and resale value. They might separate Capacity into cargo capacity and passenger capacity. The family, which for personal reasons always buys Hondas, might decide to consider as alternatives the Accord Sedan, Accord Hybrid Sedan, Pilot SUV, CR-V SUV, Element SUV, and Odyssey Minivan.

The hierarchy for this decision could be diagrammed like this:

AHP hierarchy for the Jones family car buying decision. The Goal is green, the Criteria and Subcriteria are yellow, and the Alternatives are pink. The diagram for the Alternatives has been simplified by showing all of them (six different models of Hondas) below the lowest level of each criterion.

Alternatives for the Jones family car buying decision. To save space in the diagrams, we have represented them as stacks of papers, eliminating the large number of lines that actually connect them to their covering criteria.

Note that the covering criteria for the alternatives consist of the four subcriteria under Cost, plus the Safety and Style criteria, plus the two subcriteria under Capacity. The covering criteria are always at the lowest level of criteria (and subcriteria, sub-subcriteria, etc.) directly above the alternatives.

Also note that the structure of the vehicle-buying hierarchy might be different for other families (ones who don't limit themselves to Hondas, or who care nothing about style, or who drive less than 5,000 miles (8,000 km) a year, etc.). It would definitely be different for a 25-year-old playboy who doesn't care how much his cars cost, knows he will never wreck one, and is intensely interested in speed, handling, and the numerous aspects of style.

Water height in a dam

Deciding on the best water level for an important dam.

Other examples

Chapter 4 of Thomas L. Saaty's Decision Making for Leaders discusses 32 hierarchies that have been used with the Analytic Hierarchy Process. They include hierarchies for business decisions, personal and domestic decisions, public policy decisions, planning economic policies, estimating and predicting, and measuring influences. Some of the hierarchies are shown below.