IJAHP: Ferretti/INFORMS 2014 Highlights 

 International Journal of 
the Analytic Hierarchy 

Process 

146 Vol. 7 Issue 1 2015 

ISSN 1936-6744 

http://dx.doi.org/10.13033/ijahp.v7i1.330 

INFORMS 2014 Highlights 
 

Valentina Ferretti 

 

The INFORMS 2014 Conference took place in sunny and welcoming San Francisco, 

one of the most fascinating cities in beautiful California. This conference was a huge 

success with more than 5000 participants and many interesting events, including the 

50
th
 anniversary of Decision Analysis! 

 

The conference theme, "Bridging Data and Decisions," reflected the broad scope of 

what was covered, from data analytics to new optimization and analysis 

methodologies to models and practical applications pertinent to numerous industries 

and research fields. In addition, a very distinguished group of keynote and plenary 

speakers headlined the program. 

 

The four days of the Conference (November 9-12) provided very interesting 

applications in many different fields, thus stimulating the debate on further research 

concerning methods to make better decisions and supplying important cues for future 

developments. In particular, several interesting studies dealing with the AHP and 

ANP were presented. To name a few inspiring ones, Magda Gabriela Sava, Jerrold 

May and Luis Vargas proposed a study dealing with sensitivity analysis for Analytic 

Network Models; Daisuke Amano and Yasutaka Kainuma suggested the development 

of a customer satisfaction function based on Kano’s Quality Model and the AHP; 

Halil Cobuloglu and Esra Buyuktahtakin developed a stochastic AHP Model for 

Sustainable Biomass Crop Selection; Lin Su, Bing Gou, Xia Wang and Xin Zheng 

evaluated the degree of city-production integration of Shanghai High-tech industrial 

park by applying the fuzzy AHP; William Fox proposed modeling and sensitivity 

analysis to MADM overlay and used the AHP to find node influences in the Noordin 

Dark Network; and Fesseha Gebremikael, Iddrisu Awudu and Khalid Bachkar 

developed a deterministic model using the AHP for agriculture feed processing 

supply chain modeling. 

 

All the presentations highlighted a wide tool box, extending the AHP into exciting 

new directions and relevant applications for business and society which bridge the 

gap between research and practice. In conclusion, this shows that the AHP 

community had strong presence at the INFORMS annual meeting. Let’s start thinking 

about contributing to the next meeting which will take place in Philadelphia this 

autumn! 

 

Valentina Ferretti in Point Reyes, heading north from San Francisco after the Conference