Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) is a proven methodological framework for public policy impact assessment and conflict management across diverse contexts.

Decision Analysis Lab at the Joint Research Centre conducts methodological and applied research, producing scientific publications, technical reports, guidelines, and tools to advance SMCE.

SOCRATES, our specialized software tool, facilitates impact assessment by structuring problems, making weighting relations transparent, and allowing sensitivity and robustness analysis.

In the European Commission, we help implement SMCE in various policy areas, including health, energy, and environment, supporting impact assessments to identify the best policy options in a structured, inclusive, and transparent way.

Why use Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation

SMCE is a methodological framework for developing and comparing policy alternatives in a consistent and transparent way, allowing for the integration of a plurality of technical impact dimensions and social perspectives. SMCE is based on the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), which is the most widespread multidimensional modelling approach to decision problems. The basic idea is that one has first to establish objectives, i.e. the direction of the desired changes (e.g. maximize profits, minimize environmental impact, minimize social exclusion, etc.) and then find useful practical criteria which indicate the consistency between an option and a given objective. 

Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) is specifically designed for public policy, serving as a highly effective methodological and operational framework for ex ante impact assessment of policy options. Its basic methodological foundation is incommensurability, i.e. the notion that in comparing options, a plurality of technical dimensions and social perspectives is needed.

SMCE has demonstrated its usefulness for policy assessment and conflict management in many real-world problems in various geographical and cultural contexts. SMCE can provide a methodology that is:

• inter/multi-disciplinary, since the various criterion scores can assess a wide range of impacts, for example, by using results of economic, environmental, energy, and other simulation models;
• participatory, allowing to take a plurality of social values, perspectives and interests into account;
• transparent, since all criteria are presented in their original form without any transformations in money, energy or whatever common measurement rod.

In the framework of SMCE, mathematical aggregation and ranking rules guarantee consistency between assumptions used and results obtained. The importance of mathematical approaches in SMCE is their ability to allow a consistent aggregation of the diverse information. Otherwise, the standard objection might be that the aggregation of apples and oranges is impossible. Multi-criteria mathematics does answer to this objection in a definitive way.

Operational implementation

From an operational point of view, the support of a software tool makes all required computations very quick. The Decision Analysis Lab at the Joint Research Centre has developed such software tool, called SOCRATES (SOcial multi-CRiteria AssessmenT of European policieS).

Completed applications of SMCE and SOCRATES in European Commission's impact assessments are documented in the Commission’s Modelling Inventory MIDAS.

Team activities

The activities of the Decision Analysis Lab include: 

• methodological research resulting in scientific publications, technical reports and guidelines;
• applied research for the development of software tools, such as SOCRATES;
• support to the policy departments of the European Commission, known as Directorates-General responsible for different policy areas, and international organizations, such as the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency;
• training courses on the use of social multi-criteria evaluation for public policy analyses.

The team collaborates with the main international scientific networks and academic institutions in the field, such as the European Working Group on Multi Criteria Decision Aid.