Employing Multidimensional Data Visualization Tools to Assess the Impact of Constraint Uncertainties on Complex Design Problems

A potential source of uncertainty within multi-objective design problems can be the exact value of the underlying design constraints. This uncertainty will affect the resulting performance of the selected system commensurate with the level of risk that decision-makers are willing to accept. This research focuses on developing visualization tools that allow decision-makers to specify uncertainty distributions on design constraints and to visualize their effects in the performance space using multidimensional data visualization methods to solve problems with high orders of computational complexity. These visual tools will be demonstrated using an example portfolio design scenario in which the goal of the design problem is to maximize the performance of a portfolio with an uncertain budget constraint.