The term multicriteria originates from operational research work on multicriteria decision-making. A multicriteria approach is essential when the goal is to identify the most suitable solution(s) to a multidimensional problem and thus facilitate decision-making. It enables the comparison of options using a set of appropriate criteria, whether hierarchical or not.
This type of approach is particularly well-suited for assessing sustainability in agriculture, which is a complex, multi-stakeholder, and multidimensional concept. 
It involves considering and reflecting the full range of objectives related to the three classic pillars of sustainability: economy, environment, and society, as well as their potential synergies and trade-offs. This requires integrating a variety of knowledge from different disciplines to conduct assessments (of cropping systems, production methods, etc.). Numerous methods and tools exist for performing multicriteria assessments of sustainability or its individual pillars.

Assessment methods often rely on a list of indicators organized based on the determinants, which are the issues/objectives of sustainability. Examples include IDEA and, on this site, MASC©, DEXiFruits, DEXIAF, etc.

An assessment tool serves as the platform for implementing evaluation methods. For the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, we offer user-friendly software to create life cycle inventories for agri-food systems (MEANS-InOut), which must be paired with impact calculation software (SimaPro or OpenLCA). For methods based on DEXi, we provide the IZI-Eval interface, which simplifies their use and analysis.

References

According to Lairez, Feschet et al., 2015
Juliette LAIREZ, Pauline FESCHET, Joël AUBIN, Christian BOCKSTALLER, Isabelle BOUVAREL (Coord.), 2015, Agriculture et développement durable: Guide pour l'évaluation multicritère, 226p
Pour aller plus loin :
Gésan-Guiziou, G., Alaphilippe, A., Aubin, J., Bockstaller, C., Boutrou, R., Buche, P., Collet, C., Girard, A., Martinet, V., Membré, J.-M., 2020. Diversity and potentiality of multi-criteria decision analysis methods for agri-food research. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 40.