Spatial Decision Support System for Bank-Industry Based on GIS and Expert Systems Integration

Abstract

This chapter performs a case analysis of the integrated use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Expert Systems (ES) to assist decision-making process specifically on the question: where is the best place for a new retailer at the bank-industry? Choosing the best location for a new commerce unit is an important and complex decision because both spatial and symbolic variables are involved. The choice of locations requires strategic decisions based not only on common sense but also on the experience of experts, and this involves solid research. The integration of GIS with other special-purpose software can improve the potential of performed analysis. Particularly GIS integrated with ES can assist those tasks by making them less subjective. GIS can subsidize spatial marketing analysis by combining company socio-economic variables with the concurrence ones, while ES can store the expert’s logical sequence of reasoning and even the importance order of symbolic variables. When the expert queries the ES, he or she gets data collected by other professionals otherwise dependant on them. In bank industry those decisions are critical, because opening a new unit must take in account the spatial variables, as concurrence proximity, and symbolic variables concerned about the building where it will be located. This chapter was based on a dissertation for Master Degree (Carnasciali, A. M. S., 2007) in which a study case was developed, on an analysis using integrated ES and GIS to open a new retailer of HSBC Bank Brazil S/A, in the city of Curitiba, Parana – Brazil. A comparison was made between the methods used by the HSBC experts against the proposed system. Conclusions pointed out that the proposed system has contributed to an improvement in the decision-making process for the banking industry location problems, enlarging possibilities for spatial analysis and assisting the experts with subjective tasks.