MCAT is designed to help evaluating a set of decision options along a variety of criteria. Taking into account the costs associated to each decision option it uses optimisation techniques to come up with an optimum portfolio of decision options that returns a maximised aggregated benefit score whilst keeping a budget constraint.

MCAT's target user group are planners and policy staff on all policy levels as well as consultancies and scientists who need to evaluate a set of decision options along a variety of criteria subject to a budget constraint.

MCAT can be used rather intuitively. However potential MCAT users should have a basic understanding of how multi-criteria analysis works. The provided documentation and sample files enable users to quickly get familiar with MCAT's functionality.

A regional body wants to spend $4m to improve waterway health in a catchment. A panel of experts proposed a set of projects (decision options) to do so. The total cost of all projects is greater than the available budget so that only a subset of projects can be selected. To evaluate the projects against each other, the panel suggests a set of performance measures (criteria) and comes up with criteria scores. Using MCAT enables the panel to quickly come up with the optimum portfolio of projects that should be funded.

MCAT provides a user friendly interface where the user is guided through the evaluation process in wizard like structure. Various charts allow the user to analyse results and comfortably perform sensitivity analysis. Analysis results are saved to a text file which can be opened by any text editor. All charts can be copied to the clipboard and pasted to any application that supports pasting of graphical objects.