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SMCE Factors: Benefits and Costs

A Factor in the SMCE application is a criterion that contributes to a certain degree to the output.

a Benefit: contributes positively to the output; the more you have (the higher the values), the better it is.
a Cost: contributes negatively to the output; the less you have (the lower the values), the better it is.

A Factor is either an input map or an attribute column in an attribute table.

As opposed to constraints, poor performance of a factor can be compensated by good performance of another factor. This can still lead to good overall performance in the composite index map.

When creating and filling a criteria tree, you need to specify for each factor:

a name as text (like a description), and
an input map or an input attribute column (the data).

For more information, see Insert Factor.

Before calculating a sub goal or the main goal (i.e. a composite index map), you also need to:

standardize the input data for each factor,
specify the weight for each factor.

For more information, see Standardize and Weigh.

Optionally, to keep overview of various criteria that can be considered as a sub goal of the main goal, you can add a Group of Factors (i.e. sub goals). Under a Group, you can add multiple Cost Factors and multiple Benefit Factors.