Yves De Smet

Research, Practice, Teaching

Since October 1 2007, I am Assistant Professor at the Engineering Faculty of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. I am in charge of the SMG laboratory which is a unit of the Computer and Decision Engineering Department.  My teaching activities mainly cover Operations Research, Probability and Statistics and Decision Sciences. In December 2005, I have presented a PhD thesis entitled « A Multicriteria Perspective on Reverse Auctions ». My research is mainly focused on Multicriteria Decision Aid and I do my best to promote the applications of these tools to real problems. Currently, I am supervising 5 PhD theses and I am the promoter of one First Spin-Off project.

Research

 

« An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes that can be done, in a narrow field » Niels Henrik David Bohr

My research interests cover different aspects of Multicriteria Decision Aid: multicriteria auctions, multicriteria classification and clustering techniques, metaheuristics applied to MCDA problems, the development of multicriteria visualisation tools for GIS, robustness analysis,… I am currently supervising four PhD candidates: Ayman Boujelbene, Stefan Eppe, Karim Lidouh, Julien Roland and Dagmara Swistek.

 

I have about 50 presentations in international conferences and workshops. Here is a list of my (peer reviewed) publications:

 

17. De Smet, Y., Mareschal, B. et Verly, C. « Extending the PROMETHEE II method to continuous and combinatorial multi-objective optimization problems: a first model», to appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE 2009 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Hong Kong, (2009)

 

16. Mareschal, B. et De Smet, Y. « Visual Promethee: Developments of the PROMTHEE & GAIA multicriteria decision aid methods», to appear in the Proceedings of the IEEE 2009 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Hong Kong, (2009)

 

15. Boujelben, M.A., De Smet, Y., Frikha, A. et Chabchoub, H. « Building a binary outranking relation in uncertain, imprecise and multi-experts contexts : the application of evidence theory », International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, to appear

 

14. Boujelben, M.A., De Smet, Y., Frikha, A. et Chabchoub, H. « The first belief dominance : a new approach in evidence theory for comparing basic belief assignments » to appear in the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory, October (2009), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence

 

13. Lidouh, K., De Smet, Y. et Minh Tuan Huynh, “Circular representations of a valued preference matrix” to appear in the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory, October (2009), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence

 

12. Hayez, Q., Mareschal, B. et De Smet, Y. « New GAIA Visualization Methods » in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Visualization (2009), Barcelona – IEEE Computer Society

 

11. Lidouh, K., De Smet, Y. et Zimányi, E. « GAIA Map : A Tool for Visual Ranking Analysis in Spatial Multicriteria Problems » in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Visualization (2009), Barcelona – IEEE Computer Society

 

10. De Smet, Y. et Eppe, S. « Multicriteria Relational Clustering : The case of binary outranking matrices » in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Proceedings of the EMO 2009 conference) (2009)

 

9. Mareschal, B., De Smet, Y. et Nemery, P. « Rank Reversal in the PROMETHEE II Method : Some New Results », proceedings of de IEEE 2008 International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Singapore, (2008)

 

8. Boujelben, M.A., De Smet, Y., Frikha, A. et Chabchoub, H. « DISSET : A disjunctive sorting method based on evidence theory », Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences (2007), Vol. 32(4), 253-274

 

7. De Smet, Y. « A multicriteria perspective on reverse auctions »  4OR (2007), Vol. 5, 169-172

 

6. De Smet, Y. « Multicriteria Auctions without full comparability of bids »  European Journal of Operational Research (2007), Vol. 177, 1433-1452

 

5. Hites, R., De Smet, Y., Risse, N., Salazar, M. et Vincke, P. « About the applicability of MCDA to some robustness problems », European Journal of Operational Research (2006), Vol. 174, n°1, 322-332

 

4. De Smet, Y. et Montano Guzman, L. « Towards Multicriteria Clustering : an extension of the k-means algorithm », European Journal of Operational Research (2004), Vol. 158, n°2, 390-398

 

3. De Smet, Y. "Butterfly auctions: clustering the bidding space", proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Electronic Commerce Research, Dallas, October (2003), pp 105-115

 

2. De Smet, Y. "Multicriteria Auctions: an introduction", proceedings of the 14th Mini-EURO Conference, HCP 2003, Human Centered Processes: Distributed decision making and man-machine cooperation (2003), pp 277-281

 

1. De Smet, Y., Springael, J. et Kunsch, P. « Towards Statistical Multicriteria Decision Modelling : a first approach », Journal of Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (2002), vol. 11, n°6, 291-303

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teaching

 

Since 2001, I have supervised 45 master theses. I am also regularly involved in academic projects and industrial stages. Here is a list of my courses:

 

· “Calcul des Probabilités et Statistiques” (BA2 FSA, BA2 FS INFO)

· “Recherche Opérationnelle” (MA1 FSA, BA3 FS INFO, MA1 FS ACTUARIAT)

· “Ingénierie de la Décision” (MA2 FSA)

· “Instruments et Processus d’Aide ŕ la Décision en Environnement” (MA2 FS IGEAT) with Professor Edwin Zaccaď

 

 

Practice

 

After my degree in Mathematics, I have been working for two years for Flux Consultancy (nowadays Business & Decision). As a SAS expert, I have been involved in two main risk management projects for Belgian Banks. Nowadays I am still conducting business projects as a freelancer or for the university. Recent contracts include;

· KBC: development of a tracking error model for the department of assets management;

· ELIA: development of a model to evaluate replacement strategies for low and high voltage equipments;

· La Police Fédérale: development of a model to assess the criminality in Belgium;

· Fluxys: development of an optimization model.

 

Besides these projects, I also teach short courses (typically 2 or 3 days) in “Statistics” or “Decision Aid” (most of them in collaboration with my colleague Prof. Bertrand Mareschal). Recent seminars have been organized for CORA, BELGACOM and ULB Continuous Training.

 

Finally, I am the promoter of the Fist Spin-Off project called “D-SIGHT”. This future spin-off will be dedicated to the selling of a software and consultancy services in the field of multicriteria decision aid.