OBJECTIVES To establish a ranking for Brazilian capitals and the Federal District through lifestyle data published in the Vigitel 2017 (Surveillance System of Risk and Protective Factors for Chronic Diseases by Telephone Survey). This ranking aims to know which Brazilian capital is more likely to develop chronic non-communicable diseases in order to support the decision-making on preventive actions.

METHODS The TOPSIS and PROMÉTHÉE II multi-criteria methods were applied to establish the ranking. Firstly, TOPSIS was applied to identify the 5 capitals closer to developing chronic diseases. Brazilian capitals and the Federal District composed the set of alternatives. Four attributes from Vigitel survey formed the set of criteria: percentage of adults who smoke ≥20 cigarettes/day, percentage of adults with insufficient physical activity, percentage of adults with obesity (BMI ≥30 kg m²) and percentage of adults who consume soda on ≥5 days. After that, PROMÉTHÉE II was applied to build the ranking for those 5 capitals through an outranking relation. Thus, these 5 capitals form the set of alternatives.

RESULTS The ranking established by PROMÉTHÉE II for the five capitals pre-selected by TOPSIS takes place in the following order: Porto Alegre, Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Florianopolis. Through the outranking relation established by PROMÉTHÉE II the main attributes to develop chronic diseases on each capital in comparison with the others are: the 4 studied attributes in Porto Alegre; consume of soda and cigarettes smoking in Curitiba; insufficient physical activity, consume of soda and cigarettes smoking in São Paulo; obesity in Rio de Janeiro; and none criteria in Florianopolis.

CONCLUSIONS The TOPSIS-PROMÉTHÉE II approach allowed the ranking of Brazilian capitals according to 4 different attributes from Vigitel survey generating relevant information to aid the decision-making process about chronic diseases prevention.