A Decision Support System for Benefits Realisation in Front End Design of Construction Projects in Dynamic Contexts

There is an increasing interest in the performance of construction projects, focussing on measurable value delivery. This research proposes a novel decision support system to support Front End Design (FED) decision making in addressing continuing value constraints in the delivery of project benefits. Stakeholder involvement and interests in projects that impact on project requirements understanding and management often means competing and sometimes conflicting requirements. However, projects now face increasing expectations to cope with emergent needs, which adds to uncertainty in the design process. As a result, there are continuing challenges in understanding and measuring project performance in terms of derived benefits. Increasingly, research points to the need for new understanding of FED processes on account of their vital contribution to value generation throughout the project life cycle. Much of current design practice however relies on qualitative explanatory/rationalistic methods to model uncertainty and predict changes in use cases in projects. The reliability of the approaches in the face of myriad, often conflicting and competing stakeholder interests in AEC design is increasingly under focus. This research adopts a mixed-methods approach in developing, validating and evaluating the proposed system in two case study project contexts for comparative assessment of the modelling results. The research formalises a new decision system (DESIDE), in exploring mathematical modelling based on Bayesian probabilistic models and proposes a new system focussed on the utility of decision making in the realisation of project benefits. The research explores the use of probability theory and appropriate mathematical approaches in the management and modelling of requirements and uncertainty during design decision making. The research also explores the use of complementary requirements forecasting modelling in a holistic integrated modelling approach. The research contributes to knowledge through 1) the new decision system that presents new frontiers in empirical evaluation of FED Benefits Realisation, 2) presenting an integrated analytical modelling approach of project requirements modelling in FED with a focus on the full project lifecycle performance based on analytical utility assessments and cause-effect modelling and 3) presenting a new integrated forecast and uncertainty probabilistic modelling approach of requirements in FED to support benefits realisation in projects

The comparative analysis of decision support system creation quantitative methods for enterprises in conditions of the uncertainty

В статье выполнено сравнительное исследования количественных методов с целью обнаружения их недостатков и оценки их адекватности на примере расчета вероятности банкротства. Для избавления недостатков количественных методов было предложено использование качественных методов, как пример был рассмотрен метод ОРКЛАСС. Использование качественных методов позволило бы не только избавиться от обнаруженных недостатков, а и дало бы возможность получать рекомендации по улучшению ситуации.In article it is performed comparative of research of quantitative methods for their deficiencies and the evaluations of their adequacy by the example of calculation of probability of bankruptcy. For deliverance of deficiencies of quantitative methods use of qualitative methods was offered, as example was considered method ORKLASS. Using qualitative methods would not only get rid of the deficiencies found, but also would make it possible in addition to the quantitative results get recommendations . Today there are many methods that predict the probability of any phenomena in the economic sector in the face of uncertainty. All of these methods are constructed on mathematical models using numerical values and algebraic operations on them, that is, they quantitative. The most popular and common models, used for methods of the evaluation of probability of bankruptcy, are considered following: Altman Z-score, a revised Z-Score model and Altman model adapting for the non-manufacturers. For example, was calculated probability of bankruptcy “Ukrtelecom” company and all models give inadequate results. It is possible to draw conclusion that it is necessary to think above approach to creation of a new model of forecasting, as deficiencies of quantitative methods can bring to nothing a huge scope of work. The decision of this problem can become use of q ualitative methods apart from quantitative, as all deficiencies listed above are not inherent to qualitative methods, hence, at their use of the model to be deprived as well of these deficiencies. Additionally, use of qualitative methods will allow not only to give quantitative result, and possible problem solving variants, if such is

Risk Management in the Arctic Offshore: Wicked Problems Require New Paradigms

Recent project-management literature and high-profile disasters—the financial crisis, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the Fukushima nuclear accident—illustrate the flaws of traditional risk models for complex projects. This research examines how various groups with interests in the Arctic offshore define risks. The findings link the wicked problem framework and the emerging paradigm of Project Management of the Second Order (PM-2). Wicked problems are problems that are unstructured, complex, irregular, interactive, adaptive, and novel. The authors synthesize literature on the topic to offer strategies for navigating wicked problems, provide new variables to deconstruct traditional risk models, and integrate objective and subjective schools of risk analysis

InfoScrub: Towards Attribute Privacy by Targeted Obfuscation

Personal photos of individuals when shared online, apart from exhibiting a myriad of memorable details, also reveals a wide range of private information and potentially entails privacy risks (e.g., online harassment, tracking). To mitigate such risks, it is crucial to study techniques that allow individuals to limit the private information leaked in visual data. We tackle this problem in a novel image obfuscation framework: to maximize entropy on inferences over targeted privacy attributes, while retaining image fidelity. We approach the problem based on an encoder-decoder style architecture, with two key novelties: (a) introducing a discriminator to perform bi-directional translation simultaneously from multiple unpaired domains; (b) predicting an image interpolation which maximizes uncertainty over a target set of attributes. We find our approach generates obfuscated images faithful to the original input images, and additionally increase uncertainty by 6.2$\times$ (or up to 0.85 bits) over the non-obfuscated counterparts.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figure

Student interactions in online discussion forums: their perception on learning with business simulation games

Digital technology offers new teaching methods with controversial results over learning. They allow students to develop a more active participation in their learning process although it does not always drive to unequivocal better learning outcomes. This study aims to offer additional evidence on the contribution of business simulation games to students' learning outcomes, considering student interactions in online discussion forums. We conducted a qualitative research with the online discussion forums of 5 different courses at bachelor and master levels, which involves 41 students' teams. The final sample was composed of 3681 messages posted by the students. The results reveal that some generic and specific managerial skills exert a positive influence on learning outcomes. Students mostly highlighted teamwork, decision-making, information processing, reaching agreements, and dealing with uncertainty as the most relevant contributions of the game towards their learning. These results have instructional and pedagogical implications for determining the best way to enhance students' motivation and learning outcomes when using digital technology methods, which involves recommendations that affect their design and monitoring

Structuring Decisions Under Deep Uncertainty

Innovative research on decision making under ‘deep uncertainty’ is underway in applied fields such as engineering and operational research, largely outside the view of normative theorists grounded in decision theory. Applied methods and tools for decision support under deep uncertainty go beyond standard decision theory in the attention that they give to the structuring of decisions. Decision structuring is an important part of a broader philosophy of managing uncertainty in decision making, and normative decision theorists can both learn from, and contribute to, the growing deep uncertainty decision support literature

Fuzzy Interval-Valued Multi Criteria Based Decision Making for Ranking Features in Multi-Modal 3D Face Recognition

Soodamani Ramalingam, 'Fuzzy interval-valued multi criteria based decision making for ranking features in multi-modal 3D face recognition', Fuzzy Sets and Systems, In Press version available online 13 June 2017. This is an Open Access paper, made available under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This paper describes an application of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) for multi-modal fusion of features in a 3D face recognition system. A decision making process is outlined that is based on the performance of multi-modal features in a face recognition task involving a set of 3D face databases. In particular, the fuzzy interval valued MCDM technique called TOPSIS is applied for ranking and deciding on the best choice of multi-modal features at the decision stage. It provides a formal mechanism of benchmarking their performances against a set of criteria. The technique demonstrates its ability in scaling up the multi-modal features.Peer reviewedProo

A framework on information behaviour of SME managers for decision-making on emerging ICTs

The aim of this study is to explore the perceived information needs and information behaviours of manager of UK small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). As technology advancement and innovation are changing rapidly affecting organisations in different ways, organization executives are introducing new technologies for their operations and business environment becomes more complex and dynamic, government introducing different policies to guide the use of these emerging ICTs. As a result, information becomes significant during adoption decision-making process for SME managers to make an inform decision. To achieve this aim, a framework is developed based on existing literature, using the technology organization environmental (TOE) model as the theoretical underpinning for empirical investigation on information behaviour of SME managers in this study. This study is qualitative in nature, and semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with twenty SME managers in the UK service sector. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. Following Myers and Newman’s (2007) guidelines for qualitative interview and triangulation method were used to validate the conceptual framework and established the research rigour and quality. The research findings explained information behaviours of SME managers in the contexts of technology organisation environment as information behaviour triggered and perceived information needs during the adoption decision in SMEs. These findings provide further insight into ICT adoption in SMEs through information behaviours and highlighted the significant of sources of information and pre-information needed during the decision-making process. The research also contributes to theory in the information systems field by using relevant literature from information science field to explore information behaviours of SME managers. Future research can be done in other sectors of the economy to show more holistic behaviours of SME managers

A review of multi-criteria decision making methods for enhanced maintenance delivery

Conventionally there is a strong relation between manufacturing and services in complex engineering industries. For companies which aim to last in the competitive manufacturing market choosing appropriate decision making methods to improve their maintenance delivery has a vital role. The aim of this paper is to review Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) models, evaluate each method and do a critical comparison to assess them from a maintenance management point of view. The first section of this paper reviews MCDM methods in different literature, and then the second part develops a set of criteria to classify different techniques. At the end methods are compared based on developed criteria. This paper assesses different MCDM models, and provides a framework to select approaches for maintenance management