ISAHP 2009 Symposium, July 29–August 1, 2009, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
We have completed a very successful tenth ISAHP conference on the Analytic Hierarchy Process, July 28-Aug 1, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There were 85 papers, 110 participants and 28 countries represented.
The pictures from the gala dinner by the official photographer, are posted at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pittbusiness/sets/72157621819432615/
Two sets of additional pictures by Roman Karpovich are also online at http://picasaweb.google.com/analgetic/ISAHP2009Day1 and http://picasaweb.google.com/analgetic/ISAHP2009Day2#
This will possibly be viewed in the future as a historic meeting of the ISAHP society. The keynote addresses ranged from the talk given by Thomas Saaty, the creator of the AHP, where he laid out his vision for the future of the AHP to the talk by Daniel Saaty, our son, about how the AHP is helping the Green Bay Packers football team do a better job of picking players in the seasonal draft. At the Gala dinner river boat cruise awards were given to the 11 authors of the AHP that attended the meeting. These are people who have written books on the AHP in either their own languages or in English. Recognition was given to 15 new PHD's with thesis topics in AHP. The programmer of the SuperDecisions software which implements the AHP/ANP decision making theory, William Adams, was present. Five chairpersons of earlier ISAHP meetings were on the boat. So this was an assembly of the important people of the AHP that may never again happen.
In addition, Enrique Mu, the Editor of the new online journal about the AHP, the IJAHP (International Journal of the AHP) was at the Gala dinner. Fabio De Felice of the University of Cassino in Italy who started the online AHP Academy was at the dinner as well.
Fabio De Felice and his Italian team have proposed to host the next ISAHP conference in 2011in Naples. This will be a terrific location and they are wonderful hosts as we can tell you from having attended a workshop organized by Fabio in Gaeta, Italy, in 2007.
Thanks to all who attended.
About the Analytic Hierarchy Process
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a structured method for helping people deal with complex decisions. It provides a comprehensive and rational framework for structuring a problem, for representing and quantifying its elements, for relating those elements to overall goals, and for evaluating alternative solutions. Rather than prescribing a "correct" decision, the AHP helps people to determine one. Based on mathematics and human psychology, it was developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s and has been extensively studied and refined since then. It is used throughout the world in a wide variety of decision situations, in fields such as government, business, industry, healthcare, and education. Its most general framework applies to decision making with dependence and feedback and with benefits, opportunities, costs and risks synthesized using strategic criteria with sensitivity applied in determining the stability of the outcome. The AHP/ANP use main core mathematics to derive priorities by making comparisons using the idea of dominance both for criteria, subcriteria and alternatives. It is validated in practice when actual measurements exist or when answers can be derived probabilistically. Thousands of applications around the world have been made using the AHP, not only by researchers but by practitioners, particularly those who allocate resources to projects, to vendors, and to military operations. Dozens of books have been written on the subject along with more than five thousand published articles in a diversity of languages. More about the ISAHP and the AHP/ANP
Sponsored By
In October, 2008, Thomas L. Saaty received the Informs Impact Prize for his seminal work on the Analytic Hierarchy Process.