Development of Integrated Decision-Making Support Systems: A Practical Approach

Integrated Decision-Making Support Systems (IDMSS), are specialized Computer Based Information Systems designed to support all phases of the Decision- Making Process. Full integration of stand-alone components was proposed in the early 90´s and, despite substantial reported benefits above less integrated systems, few of the fully integrated systems have been implemented in practice. We believe that this “implementation paradox” is caused by the lack of a process-oriented perspective to guide the implementation of IDMSS. This tutorial has the goal of offering such a process-oriented approach

INTCare: a knowledge discovery based intelligent decision support system for intensive care medicine

This paper introduces the INTCare system, an intelligent information system based on a completely automated Knowledge Discovery process and on the Agents paradigm. The system was designed to work in Hospital Intensive Care Units, supporting the physicians’ decisions by means of prognostic Data Mining models. In particular, these techniques were used to predict organ failure and mortality assessment. The main intention is to change the current reactive behaviour to a pro-active one, enhancing the quality of service. Current applications and experimentations, the functional and structural aspects, and technological options are presented

An integrative evaluation framework for intelligent decision support systems

Evaluation of the overall effectiveness of decision support systems (DSS) has been a research topic since the early 1980s. As artificial intelligence methods have been incorporated into systems to create intelligent decision support systems (IDSS), researchers have attempted to quantify the value of the additional capabilities. Despite the useful and relevant insights generated by previous research, existing evaluation methodologies offer only a fragmented and incomplete view of IDSS value and the contribution of its technical infrastructure. This paper proposes an integrative, multiple criteria IDSS evaluation framework through a model that links the decision value of an IDSS to both the outcome from, and process of, decision making and down to specific components of the IDSS. The proposed methodology provides the designer and developer specific guidance on the intelligent tools most useful for a specific user with a particular decision problem. The proposed framework is illustrated by evaluating an actual IDSS that coordinates management of urban infrastructures.Decision support systems Evaluation framework Multiple criteria analysis Artificial intelligence

An Integrative Evaluation Framework for Determining the Value of Group Decision Support Systems

Group-based decision-making situations are relevant to engineering management practice. To assist group decision making, specialized computer-based tools called Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) have been promoted since the late 1980s. Nevertheless, a review of the extensive research on GDSS design and evaluation reveals that an integrated framework is not available to evaluate the decision-making value of a specific GDSS. This article proposes a GDSS-value evaluation framework by considering the process of, and outcomes from, decision making together with the technical capabilities needed to provide them. The framework is implemented with an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model, and its utilization is illustrated with the evaluation of three real GDSS applications. This integrative GDSS-value evaluation framework can be used by engineering managers as a tool to determine the overall decision-making value from an existing or projected GDSS with the aim of selecting the most adequate GDSS for a particular engineering management group-based decision-making situation