en Project scheduling and Management, Portfolio Optimization, Financial Machine Learning, Applied Operations Research, Reli پژوهشي Research <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:12pt"><span new="" roman="" style="font-family:" times=""><i>Strategic investment decisions across multiple projects require a systematic assessment of extensive quantitative and qualitative data, especially under conditions of resource constraints and uncertainty. Traditional single-project appraisal methods often fail to identify optimal portfolios aligned with organizational goals. This study presents a hybrid project portfolio selection framework integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART), and 0&ndash;1 Integer Linear Programming (ILP) to enhance decision-making clarity and robustness. The framework employs a hierarchical structure, utilizing a comprehensive set of technical, commercial, socio-economic, financial, investment, and institutional criteria. AHP establishes consistent relative weights from expert judgments, while SMART scores candidate projects, generating aggregated scores that inform an ILP optimization model aimed at maximizing portfolio utility while adhering to budget constraints, mandatory project conditions, and interdependencies. Validation is performed using real data from an Endowment Corporate Office in Ethiopia, accounting for ongoing and prospective projects under varying demand scenarios. Scenario and sensitivity analyses reveal how variations in demand and criterion weights affect project rankings and portfolio composition, alongside an assessment of portfolio risk via variance and standard deviation. The hybrid AHP&ndash;SMART&ndash;ILP approach effectively considers both tangible and intangible objectives, achieving stable portfolios that address investment complexities and interdependencies.</i></span></span></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"></div> Project portfolio optimization, Analytical hierarchy process, Multi-criteria decision making, Multi-attribute rating technique, 0–1 Integer programming, Developing economies 14 33 http://ijiepr.iust.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-2988-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Fiseha Mekonnen Guangul fiseha@dmu.ac.uk 1800319475328460014993 1800319475328460014993 Yes Mechanical Engineering Department, De Montfort University Dubai, Internet City Dubai, Building 12, Dubai, 501870, United Arab Emirates Girma Tadesse Chala girma@icem.edu.om 1800319475328460014994 1800319475328460014994 No Department of Manufacturing Technology, FTVETI, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Subhash Chandra suchandra404@gmail.com 1800319475328460014995 1800319475328460014995 No International College of Engineering and Management, P.O. Box 2511, P.C. 111, Muscat, Oman