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2025-04-07 09:00:00

Conference Opening Speech

(by Tadeusz Trzaskalik)

The current conference is the fifteenth edition of the "Modeling Preferences and Risk" series. Taking advantage of this symbolic number, which allows us to consider it a jubilee conference, I would like to mention a few matters that are perhaps not obvious, yet significant for the tradition of this conference series. It is organized by the Department of Operations Research at the University of Economics in Katowice, which marked the 25th anniversary of its founding last year.

The first "Modeling Preferences and Risk" conference took place on October 28-29, 1998 - more than half a year before the Department was formally established. It was organized by the Section of IT Applications in Operations Research, which I headed at the time. This section, along with the Section of Operations Research, was part of the then-existing Department of Econometrics. The second conference, held in 1999, was already organized by the newly established Department of Operations Research, formed on July 7, 1999, through the merger of the two aforementioned sections.

Let us take a moment to go further back in time - to the 1970s and 1980s - when the Institute of Econometrics, directed by Professor Zbigniew Pawłowski, was active. The auditorium in which we now gather bears the name of this outstanding Polish econometrician. It was in this very auditorium, in 1994 - 31 years ago - that a lecture was delivered by Professor Kazimierz Zaraś, then affiliated with the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue in Canada. Today, Professor Zaraś is retired. After many years abroad, he has returned to Poland and has joined us for our fifteenth conference.

Professor Zaraś is connected to Professor Pawłowski, to this very auditorium, and to our conference in a unique way. Professor Pawłowski was the reviewer of the doctoral dissertation of M.Sc. Eng. Kazimierz Zaraś. The lecture mentioned earlier, delivered in 1994 to a hall packed with students of the Silesian International School of Commerce, bore the title Modeling Preferences and Risk. It focused on the application of stochastic dominance in multi-criteria decision support. Our conference derives its name from the title of that lecture.

That lecture marked the beginning of a long and fruitful collaboration between Professor Zaraś and our Department. This collaboration led to numerous joint publications, including the highly cited book published in 1998, Modeling Preferences Using Stochastic Dominance, co-authored by Professor Zaraś, Professor Grażyna Trzpiot, and myself. Other forms of collaboration included organizing joint seminars in Canada and Poland, scientific consultations, further publications, and, perhaps most notably, the organization of five editions of the international postgraduate program Project Management.

The culmination of this collaboration was the awarding of the title of Honorary Professor of the University of Economics in Katowice to Professor Kazimierz Zaraś by the University Senate on January 12, 2015. It is worth emphasizing that he was the first person to receive this distinction in such a ceremonious manner at our university.

Since 2005, the Modeling Preferences and Risk conference has been accompanied by the International Workshop on Multiple Criteria Decision Making (IWoMCDM), dedicated to the theory and applications of multicriteria decision making. It is worth recalling that the Workshop continues the tradition of a major international event - The Fourth International Conference on Multiobjective Programming and Goal Programming - organized in the year 2000 by the Department of Operations Research at the University of Economics in Katowice, held at the Jaskółka Hotel in Ustroń. Our subsequent conferences were also hosted at that hotel, up until the most recent one in 2023. This year's edition is being held in Katowice due to the change in character of the Jaskółka Hotel, which has since been converted into a health resort.

Let us now turn to some statistics related to both events. The total number of participations across all fifteen editions, including the current one, is 1,465. A chart illustrates the number of participants for each edition.

Chart with numbers of participants

The highest attendance - 136 participants - was recorded in 2005, the year when the International Workshop on Multiple Criteria Decision Making was held for the first time. The third-highest number of participants - 126 - occurred in 2021, when the conference was held online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That edition was marked by an exceptionally broad international presence, with researchers from all continents except Australia taking part - something that would have been unlikely in a traditional in-person format.

On average, each edition of the conference has attracted 98 participants, with a standard deviation of 26.

It is worth highlighting the wide variety of academic institutions represented by participants across the different editions of the conference. For example, in 2011, as many as 34 institutions took part, including AGH University of Science and Technology, Kozminski University, and several technical universities - Białystok, Częstochowa, Lublin, Silesia, Warsaw, and Wrocław. Other institutions included SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the University of Łódź, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the University of Silesia, the University of Szczecin, and the Universities of Economics in Katowice, Kraków, Poznań, and Wrocław. Participants also came from abroad, including from the Silesian University in Opava and the Technical University of Ostrava (Czech Republic), the University of Valenciennes (France), and the University of Málaga (Spain).

This particular edition was not an exception - each conference in the series has seen participation from a diverse range of academic centers, both Polish and international.

The statistics regarding the number of conferences attended by our participants are also of interest. Altogether, a total of 575 individuals have taken part in the entire series of conferences. The distribution of participation frequency is presented in the next chart.

Chart with numbers of conference participants

Notably, 244 individuals have attended the conference at least twice, which indicates a strong or very strong affiliation with our event. It is also worth emphasizing that 15 out of the 50 participants of the very first edition held in 1998 - that is, 30% - are also present at the current edition.

The first edition of the conference was opened by a keynote lecture delivered by Jean-Marc Martel from Laval University in Quebec City, Canada. The lecture, titled Multicriterion Analysis under Uncertainty: The Approach of Outranking Synthesis, marked the beginning of a series of nearly 30 keynote presentations delivered by distinguished scholars from various institutions around the world.

Following the conclusion of that first conference, the inaugural volume of the Modeling Preferences and Risk (pl., Modelowanie Preferencji a Ryzyko) publication series was released.

On the screen, we can see the titles of selected articles published in that first volume, authored by ?veterans? of our conference - participants who, 27 years later, are still with us for this fifteenth edition:

  • Jarosław Janecki - Premia za ryzyko na rynku skarbowych papierow wartościowych  (Risk Premium on the Treasury Securities Market)
  • Sławomir Jarek - Implementacja algorytmów genetycznych w analizie portfelowej (Implementation of Genetic Algorithms in Portfolio Analysis)
  • Ewa Michalska, Donata Kopańska-Bródka, Barbara Gołąbowska - Użyteczność a ryzyko w problemie wyboru portfela aklcji (Utility and Risk in the Stock Portfolio Selection Problem)
  • Adrianna Mastalerz-Kodzis - Pewien model ubezpieczenia zdrowotnego (A Certain Model of Health Insurance)
  • Jerzy Michnik - Wielokryterialny model zarządzania ryzykiem w banku komercynym (A Multicriteria Model of Risk Management in a Commercial Bank)
  • Maciej Nowak - Wielokryterialna optymalizacja rozbudowy parku maszynowego (Multicriteria Optimization of Machine Fleet Expansion)
  • Józef Stawicki - Dominacje stochastyczne dla szeregów czasowych (Stochastic Dominance for Time Series)
  • Zbigniew Świtalski - Porządkowanie wariantów decyzyjnych z wykorzystaniem stopniowanych relacji preferencji (Ordering of Decision Alternatives Using Graded Preference Relations)
  • Grażyna Trzpiot, Kazimierz Zaraś - Stability of Stochastic Dominance in Time Series Analysis
  • Barbara Zakrzewska-Derylak, Alicja Wolny, Włodzimierz Szkutnik - Ryzyko w kalkulacji składki netto (Risk in Net Premium Calculation)
  • Kazimierz Zaraś - Rough Approximation of a Preference Relation by Multi-Attribute Stochastic Dominance for a Reduced Number of Attributes

The Modelowanie Preferencji a Ryzyko series (in Polish) was published from 1998 to 2022, while the English-language annual journal Multiple Criteria Decision Making was issued from 2005 to 2023. For many years, both publishing series enjoyed significant interest from authors?both Polish and international. This was due, among other reasons, to the fact that many conference participants were at the early stages of their academic careers and were seeking opportunities for professional advancement, to which publishing in our volumes contributed. However, the introduction of institutional evaluation criteria for academic units has caused these publications to become less attractive for our most ambitious participants.

All articles submitted to the MCDM journal are available online. As for the Modelowanie Preferencji a Ryzyko series, online availability is currently only partial. Nevertheless, based on the applicable regulation issued by the Rector of our university, there is a foundation for making the full body of conference publications - published by the University of Economics in Katowice Press - available online. We intend to achieve this in the near future.

The articles published in the conference proceedings - particularly in our English-language journal MCDM - have often attracted considerable interest from the international research community, as evidenced by the number of citations. In the SCOPUS database, which has been of particular relevance to us, the number of citations reaches several hundred.

The most frequently cited papers in the SCOPUS database include:

  1. Roszkowska, E. (2011). Multi-criteria decision making models by applying the TOPSIS method to crisp and interval data. Multiple Criteria Decision Making, 6: 200-230 - 262 citations
  2. Kobryń, A. (2017). DEMATEL as a weighting method in multi-criteria decision analysis. Multiple Criteria Decision Making, 12(1963): 153-167 - 54 citations
  3. Miettinen, K. (2006). IND-NIMBUS for demanding interactive multiobjective optimization. Multiple Criteria Decision Making, 1: 137-150 - 36 citations
  4. Jarek, S. (2016). Removing inconsistency in pairwise comparison matrix in the AHP. Multiple Criteria Decision Making, 11: 63-76 - 29 citations
  5. Górecka, D., Szałucka, M. (2013). Country market selection in international expansion using multicriteria decision aiding methods. Multiple Criteria Decision Making, 8(8): 32-55 - 26 citations

On the occasion of the conference's jubilee, we wanted to honor our most dedicated and long-standing friends by preparing commemorative diplomas. I would now like to present a few of them.

The first diploma has been prepared for Professor Kazimierz Zaraś, whose lecture title?as previously mentioned?inspired the name of the Modeling Preferences and Risk conference.

The second diploma goes to Professor Józef Stawicki from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Professor Stawicki not only participated in every single edition of our conference, but also contributed to its organization - several times preparing the conference program and reviewing countless articles published in the conference proceedings.

The third diploma is awarded to Professor Ewa Roszkowska, author of the most frequently cited paper presented at our conference.

These diplomas, as well as the diplomas for multiple participation (defined as attending at least ten editions), will be awarded during the afternoon meeting and concert at the Rectorate Building.

Over the years, we have also organized many musical events as part of the conference program. In previous editions, we had the pleasure of enjoying performances by the university's folk dance and song ensemble Silesianie, concerts by the university choir, a string quartet from the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice, renowned harpsichordist Marcin Świątkiewicz, Japanese pianist Ayaki Meiwa, soprano Edyta Nowicka, as well as my own performance of polonaises by Ogiński.

This year, the musical event will feature Mr. Michał Ryguła, a recent graduate of the vocal department of the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, who will present an engaging program of Italian and Neapolitan songs. The concert will take place at 17:10 in the patio of the Rectorate Building.

To conclude, I sincerely hope that the program of this year's fifteenth edition of the Modeling Preferences and Risk conference, as well as the eleventh edition of the International Workshop on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, will meet your expectations. I wish you inspiring presentations and the opportunity to establish new academic collaborations.

Tadeusz Trzaskalik