Mobile Decision Support System Usage in Organizations

In recent years, people have widely adopted mobile computing devices in their lives. In this paper, we define mobile decision support systems (mDSS) as decision support systems built on mobile computing platforms. Several factors influencing an individual employee’s usage of mDSS are examined. We propose a model shows how perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, job mobility, and amount of information presented influence employees’ mDSS usage. In addition, employees’ mobile real-time-decision-making (mRTDM) responsibility will moderate the positive effects that job mobility has on their mDSS usage. This exploratory study seeks to define mDSS and understand how people will use these systems in organizations with today’s rapidly growing mobile technology

Mobile AME: A Handheld Application to Support Decision Making for Ammunition Personnel

Wireless technology and the emergence of handheld devices provide new ways to deliver and present information. In the military setting, availability of needed information can be crucial during the decision-making process, especially in a war zone. This paper describes the extension of a Web-based ammunition encyclopedia system developed for the U.S. Army Defense Ammunition Center (DAC) called the ammunition multimedia encyclopedia system (AME). The extension, known as Mobile AME, exploits handheld technology to provide Quality Assurance Specialist Ammunition Surveillance (QASAS) personnel with access to needed ammunition information via a personal digital assistant (PDA). The focus was on developing a highly usable system that supports QASAS decision making and training in choosing the best practices to properly handle an ammunition item including Discarded Military Munitions (DMM). This paper discusses the motivation behind Mobile AME, design and development of the system, and future directions

Twitter as a communications instrument to support the decision making process in UAE police

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophySocial media are increasingly becoming platforms of choice for communication among individuals and groups of the public, and hence organisations are interested in engaging with communities and the public through this form of media to gain intelligence from such engagements to support their decision making processes. Yet, organisations are missing on realising the potential value from using social media for this type of interaction and engagement, while paucity in research addressing practical ways to use social media communication in supporting decision making still persists. This research investigates and proposes a practical framework for using social media – specifically Twitter – as a communications instrument to support the decision making process in police organisations. The research design is based on developing and evaluating a proof of concept representing engagements between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) police as a case study of police organisations with communities and members of the public in the UAE. The proof of concept is designed based on comparing and contrasting current practices by the UAE police with models, trends, and practices discussed in related literature. The research uses the Grounded Theory methodology to guide sampling, data collection, and analysis. The contribution of the research is to both theory and practice. The research addresses a gap in the body of knowledge for a framework that guides the development of models, policies, and practices for the use of social media as a communication instrument to support decision making in governmental organisations, specifically the police. In addition, the framework offers practical insights to policy makers into using different social media to engage with the public in communication, interactions, and knowledge sharing, with the aim of supporting decision making

Hybrid intelligent decision support system for distributed detection based on ad hoc integrated WSN & RFID

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe real time monitoring of environment context aware activities, based on distributed detection, is becoming a standard in public safety and service delivery in a wide range of domains (child and elderly care and supervision, logistics, circulation, and other). The safety of people, goods and premises depends on the prompt immediate reaction to potential hazards identified in real time, at an early stage to engage appropriate control actions. Effective emergency response can be supported only by available and acquired expertise or elaborate collaborative knowledge in the domain of distributed detection that include indoor sensing, tracking and localizing. This research proposes a hybrid conceptual multi-agent framework for the acquisition of collaborative knowledge in dynamic complex context aware environments for distributed detection. This framework has been applied for the design and development of a hybrid intelligent multi-agent decision system (HIDSS) that supports a decentralized active sensing, tracking and localizing strategy, and the deployment and configuration of smart detection devices associated to active sensor nodes wirelessly connected in a network topology to configure, deploy and control ad hoc wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This system, which is based on the interactive use of data, models and knowledge base, has been implemented to support fire detection and control access fusion functions aimed at elaborating: An integrated data model, grouping the building information data and WSN-RFID database, composed of the network configuration and captured data, A virtual layout configuration of the controlled premises, based on using a building information model, A knowledge-based support for the design of generic detection devices, A multi-criteria decision making model for generic detection devices distribution, ad hoc WSNs configuration, clustering and deployment, and Predictive data models for evacuation planning, and fire and evacuation simulation. An evaluation of the system prototype has been carried out to enrich information and knowledge fusion requirements and show the scope of the concepts used in data and process modelling. It has shown the practicability of hybrid solutions grouping generic homogeneous smart detection devices enhanced by heterogeneous support devices in their deployment, forming ad hoc networks that integrate WSNs and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The novelty in this work is the web-based support system architecture proposed in this framework that is based on the use of intelligent agent modelling and multi-agent systems, and the decoupling of the processes supporting the multi-sensor data fusion from those supporting different context applications. Although this decoupling is essential to appropriately distribute the different fusion functions, the integration of several dimensions of policy settings for the modelling of knowledge processes, and intelligent and pro-active decision making activities, requires the organisation of interactive fusion functions deployed upstream to a safety and emergency response.Saudi government, represented by the Ministry of Interior and General Directorate of Civil Defenc

Support for real-time decision making in mobile financial applications

Mobile users making real-time decisions based on current information need confidence about their context been taken into consideration in producing recommendations. This chapter reviews current use of mobile technologies for decision support. Specifically, it describes a framework for assessing the impact of mobility in decision-making. The framework uses dynamic context representation of data quality to represent uncertainties in the mobile computing environment. This framework can be used for developing visual interactive displays for communicating to the user relevant changes in data quality when working in mobile environment. As an illustration, this chapter proposes a real-time decision support procedure that aims at providing on-the-spot assistance to the mobile consumer when choosing the best payment option to efficiently manage the user’s budget. The proposed procedure is based on multi-attribute decision analysis, scenario reasoning and a quality of data framework. Feasibility of the approach is demonstrated with a mobile decision support system prototype implementation