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.
Making good decisions is one of the most important things we can do; our organizations' survival and success and our own well-being depend on our decision-making ability, and this international forum is dedicated to helping us make better decisions. The International Symposium on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (ISAHP) takes place every two years. It brings together researchers, teachers and users of AHP and ANP to share their research and experiences in decision making. The ISAHP 2005 meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, took place on the University of Hawaii campus. The ISAHP 2007 meeting was held in Villa del Mar, Chile. The ISAHP 2009 meeting was held in Pittsburgh (USA).
The conference organizing and program committees represent all five continents, bringing the research, applications and perspectives of their areas of the world to this truly international forum.
