Decision Support Process Research Articles

From identification of compatibilities and conflicts to reaching marine spatial allocation agreements. Review of actions required and relevant tools and processes

Conflicts related to the use of marine space may emerge both at the spatial and the decision making level, prior to and/or after the adoption of a marine spatial plan. Marine conflict management is inherent in marine spatial planning (MSP) and should include three stages: a) identification of compatibilities and conflicts, b) avoidance of conflicts, and if required c) resolution of conflicts. Various decision support tools and processes tested so far that aim to address marine conflict management have proved successful in providing identification and visualization of spatial conflicts and compatibilities and their relevant trade-offs and thus in assisting in conflict avoidance efforts. However, in case conflict resolution is required, they fail to provide a final solution (e.g. allocation of space) acceptable by all parties involved. This happens because the (spatial) allocation rules that these processes adopt usually focus only on ensuring efficiency that is not enough to guarantee a (single) mutually acceptable solution. In the present paper, it is suggested that apart from ensuring efficiency, a solution should also ensure fairness, equity, transparency, sustainability and consideration of synergies that may emerge, both at the spatial and at the decision making level. In conclusion, there is no single tool or process that can satisfactory address all conflict management stages, and thus a careful selection and combination of decision support tools and processes is required to facilitate the production of an integrated mutually acceptable marine spatial plan.

МЕТОДОЛОГІЯ РОЗРОБКИ ТА ПРИНЦИПИ ФУНКЦІОНУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОЇ ТЕХНОЛОГІЇ ГАРМОНІЗАЦІЇ ЗМІСТУ ОСВІТИ

The work is devoted to the development of an information system that would consider the specific characteristic features of processes for a particular higher education institution (HEI), rather than those offered by existing systems that developed for HEI with other (personal) needs. The important thing is that the information system of IT "HEC" is constantly evolving, increasing and modifying its ability to ensure and improve the management of the University. The information system must perform functions related to the improvement of decision support processes in the analysis, regulation and forecasting of the HEI. The system must solve the problems associated with the collection, processing and storage of current and accumulated information in the data banks; with the computerization of the document circulation of an educational institution; with ensuring open access to information resources of an educational institution and a number of equally important activities of the University.

Simulation-Based Analytics for Quality Control Decision Support: Pipe Welding Case Study

AbstractThis research aims to enhance industrial pipe welding quality management decision support processes from both an operational and tactical management level by introducing a quantitatively dr...

A Decision Support Platform based on Cross-Sorting Methods for the Selection of Modeling Methods

The hospital supply chain performance is a concept that qualifies the good governance, the continuous improvement and the optimization of human and material resources of the hospital system. Thus, several performance analysis methods have been proposed for qualifying organizational flows and resources management. The main goal of the present study is to expose a literature review of the main graphical modeling and performance analysis techniques used in different research projects in the hospital field. The literature review will be analyzed and complemented by a classification study of the previous techniques. It is about a review in which will be proposed a computer platform based on Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. This platform uses fuzzy pairwise comparisons and cross-sorting methods. Finally, the classification study is chosen in order to highlight the most adapted techniques to the different characteristics and components of the hospital system as part of the overall support decision process.

Consistent context aware behaviour in smart home environment

The home automation controls the electronic devices remotely and automatically with the help of context aware behaviour. Context awareness is the process where data from various sensors and input from user or user action must be interpreted and corresponding commands to actuators must be generated. This context aware automation and decision support process is done with the help of adaptive rules which is defined for the automatic behaviour of devices in the smart home environment. The consistent behaviour of the devices in the smart environment will capture the customer satisfaction. This work describes the process of checking the consistent behaviour of the context aware system in smart home environment using formal modelling and verification method. We have discussed a mechanism to check the consistent behaviour of the adaptive mechanism of smart home environment. The result ensures the consistent behaviour of the context aware system in the smart environment.

EI-Annotate: an adaptive collective memory based on annotation ontology and context for decision making in economic intelligence

In the decision support process, the economic intelligence actors use mental efforts and considerable cognitive activities to solve decisional problems; they deal with a large mass of digital documents during their activities. To facilitate their activities, they use different types of annotations on the manipulated document. To exploit the benefits of these annotations, we propose in this paper, EI-Annotate, an annotation tool dedicated to economic intelligence actors, which enables them to create an adaptive collective memory. The adaptive collective memory based on annotation ontology and context suitable for economic intelligence. This memory is a knowledge management tool that can support economic intelligence actors in their decision process. The EI-Annotate annotation module is implemented as extensions using different technologies; it enables to annotate resources in different formats (document, picture, videos). We present the results of an evaluation study of the proposed architecture of an adaptive collective memory conducted with a research laboratory context, regarding their annotation experience using EI-Annotate.

Integrating maintenance work progress monitoring into aircraft maintenance planning decision support

A decision support framework is proposed, allowing for the integration of aircraft maintenance work progress monitoring into the aircraft maintenance planning decision support process. The framework is able to monitor the progression of planned maintenance by analysing real-time data on work progress. This can be used to explore optimal task planning in case of delays or maintenance being ahead of schedule. Using a combination of reliability analysis, cost analysis, decision alternative generation and ranking yields a decision support tool which is able to deal with the stochastic nature of maintenance task execution. Case study results indicate that the framework is able to generate decision alternatives with a lower total cost than the reference alternative, while at the same time optimising the maintenance planning, resulting in a possible reduction of the maintenance costs of 45 to 90% (depending on parameter settings).

Energy Performance Evaluation and Economic Analysis of Insulation Materials of Office Building in Korea

Building energy conservation measure (ECM) of insulation materials suitable for the domestic situation in the construction sector (passive) is established. The ECMs of insulation materials were classified into walls, roofs, and floors. Also, economic evaluation databases, which are composed of material costs, labor costs, and expenses for constructed alternatives, were built. After setting the target building and deriving the ECM list of insulation materials for the target building, the energy use evaluation and economic evaluation were performed for each constructed alternative. Based on this, the optimal building energy conservation measure of the target building was derived by applying the decision‐support process.

Treatment, logistical, and cost burden of prior authorization in community practice.

164 Background: Prior authorization (PA) process is complicated and labor intensive and with limited resources available to community practices, significant opportunity to reduce the costs of therapy exists by transforming this decision support process while being compliant with guidelines Methods: We retrospectively evaluated 123 patients between November 2016 and June 2016 across our three rural oncology practices with no dedicated in-house pharmacy. An established PA workflow involved two physicians, 1 nursing staff and 2 clerical staff involved in the process to manage PA for high cost imaging (PET/CT/MRI) or after a high-risk/cost prescription was initiated by a medical provider to a local pharmacy, specialty or mail-order pharmacy. Two Physicians determined strength of concordance with National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines. We examined approval rates, method of communications, time to approval and whether these variables were associated treatment delay and insurance provider Results: Eight decision steps were necessary to obtain a PA. Forty-nine Medicare (39%), 21 managed Medicaid (17%), 29 commercial insurance (23.5%) and 14 commercial insurances (11%) required PA mostly for targeted therapy (29%), oral chemotherapy (28%), PET/CT (24%). Approval rate was 94.3% on first attempt with only 1.6% being denied after an appeal process. 89% concordance with NCCN guidelines was seen. Median time to start treatment was 4 working days (Mean 4.7; Range 0-18 days). PA requests were associated with greatest delay in approval time with managed Medicaid (7 v 1.51 days; p < 0.0001) compared to Medicare, when specialty pharmacy was used (5.2 v 2.3 days p < 0.03) and when fax was used versus online (4.1 v 2.3 days p < 0.02). Conclusions: The impact of the PA process on care delivery and cost reduction are not clear. Current process is particularly burdensome on small practices especially given the high approval rates. Significant opportunity exists to reduce the inefficiency of this system using a computer algorithm-based PA using real-time online decision support system using NCCN guideline concordance

An approach based on semantic stream reasoning to support decision processes in smart cities

This paper discusses the use of stream reasoning models and techniques to provide a stream reasoning-based architecture to represent, manage and process data streams produced in the Smart City context, to extract useful knowledge for a better understanding of city phenomena and to support the decision making processes in both the city governance and the citizens. The proposed architecture, taking into account the need for processing heterogeneous data/information across several and different domains, is able to sustain decision-making processes deployed at operational, tactical and strategical levels. Such architecture is distributed and adopts a meet-in-the-middle configuration logic that is really effective and scalable in a complex environment like a (smart) city. The applicability of semantic technologies to implement all the aforementioned features is demonstrated by means of a complex case study realized by using a dataset, related to the city of Aarhus, provided by the CityPulse EU Project.

Structure-specific selection of earthquake ground motions for the reliable design and assessment of structures

A decision support process is presented to accommodate selecting and scaling of earthquake motions as required for the time domain analysis of structures. Code-compatible suites of seismic motions are provided being, at the same time, prequalified through a multi-criterion approach to induce response parameters with reduced variability. The latter is imperative to increase the reliability of the average response values, normally required for the code-prescribed design verification of structures. Structural attributes like the dynamic characteristics as well as criteria related to variability of seismic motions and their compliance with a target spectrum are quantified through a newly introduced index, δ sv–sc , which aims to prioritize motions suites for response history analysis. To demonstrate the applicability of the procedure presented, the structural model of a multi-story building was subjected to numerous suites of motions that were highly ranked according to both the proposed approach (δ sv–sc ) and the conventional one (δ conv ), that is commonly used for earthquake records selection and scaling. The findings from numerous linear response history analyses reveal the superiority of the proposed multi-criterion approach, as it extensively reduces the intra-suite structural response variability and consequently, increases the reliability of the design values. The relation between the target reliability in assessing structural response and the size of the suite of motions selected was also investigated, further demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed selection procedure to achieve higher response reliability levels with smaller samples of ground motion.

Representing decision-makers using styles of behavior: An approach designed for group decision support systems

Supporting decision-making processes when the elements of a group are geographically dispersed and on a tight schedule is a complex task. Aiming to support decision-makers anytime and anywhere, Web-based group decision support systems have been studied. However, the limitations in the decision-makers’ interactions associated to this scenario bring new challenges. In this work, we propose a set of behavioral styles from which decision-makers’ intentions can be modelled into agents. The goal is that, besides having agents represent typical preferences of the decision-makers (towards alternatives and criteria), they can also represent their intentions. To do so, we conducted a survey with 64 participants in order to find homogeneous operating values so as to numerically define the proposed behavioral styles in four dimensions. In addition, we also propose a communication model that simulates the dialogues made by decision-makers in face-to-face meetings. We developed a prototype to simulate decision scenarios and found that agents are capable of acting according to the decision-makers’ intentions and fundamentally benefit from different possible behavioral styles, just as a face-to-face meeting benefits from the heterogeneity of its participants.

An Application-Oriented Design Method for Networked Driving Simulation

Autonomous and cooperative vehicle systems represent a key priority in the automotive realm. Networked driving simulation can be utilized as a safe, cost-effective experimental replica of real traffic environments in order to support and accelerate the development of such systems. In networked driving simulation, different independent systems collaborate to achieve a common task: multi-driver traffic scenario simulation. Yet distinct system complexity levels are necessary to fulfill the requirements of various application scenarios, such as development of vehicle systems, analysis of driving behavior, and training of drivers. With myriad alternatives of available systems and components, developers of networked driving simulation are typically confronted with high design complexity. There are no systematic approaches to date for the design of networked driving simulation in accordance with the specific requirements of the concerned application scenarios. This paper presents a novel design method for networked driving simulation. The method consists mainly of a procedure model that is accompanied by a configuration software. The procedure model includes the necessary phases for the systematic design of application-oriented platforms for networked driving simulation. The configuration software embeds supportive decision-making processes that enable developers to apply the design method and easily create different system models. The design method was validated by generating system models and developing platforms of networked driving simulation for three different application scenarios.

Data Warehouse Signature: A Framework for Implementing Security Issues in Data Warehouses

Today, with the increase in the number of business web application users, the data size is obviously getting quiet huge. This data is composed together from integrated heterogeneous data sources to form Data Warehouse (DW). DW consists of critical and sensitive data used in many intelligent business models for decision support processes. Therefore, retaining data security for DW systems is a very important issue for researchers; also, it is the first priority for organizations. The current paper presents a new framework for implementing security issues in DWs named Data Warehouse Signature (DWS). The DWS framework ensures the security issues, which are Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA). In fact, this approach solves the security problems such as network overhead and data changing that occurs during transmission on Client-Server basis. The DWS approach achieves high performance by using parallel computing through a middleware named View Manager Layer (VML). Finally, this paper also presents the elastic architecture of the DWS framework with a vast applicability in multiple DW organizations depending on its network infrastructure.

Strategic Environmental Assessment for Invasive Species Management on Inhabited Islands

Over the past decade the challenges of managing invasive species on inhabited islands have clearly become limiting factors to scaling-up the area of invasive species eradications. Step-change is required to unleash the conservation and restoration potential of biodiversity on inhabited islands around the globe, and avoid the pitfalls previous attempts to eradicate invasive species on inhabited islands have fallen into. Strategic environmental assessment (SEA) is a systematic decision support process, aiming to ensure that environmental and other sustainability aspects are considered effectively throughout policy, plan and programme making. Within the framework of SEAs, on target islands eradication planners could implement a number of tools including stakeholder engagement, social impact assessment and economic cost-benefit analysis alongside existing environmental impact assessment. Such a suite of assessments capture the immediate impacts of an eradication operation on a range of values, alongside predicted long-term changes in these tightly coupled socio-ecological systems. In this paper we outline what SEA is, and then contrast invasive species management attempts occurring outside an SEA framework on two similar but also contrasting UNESCO World Heritage islands; Lord Howe Island, Australia and Fernando de Noronha, Brazil. We then demonstrate how an SEA approach to invasive species management would assist planning in New Zealand to eradicate introduced mammalian predators from two large offshore islands in New Zealand; Aotea (Great Barrier Island) and Rakiura (Stewart Island). We conclude with future prospects for applying SEA to invasive species management on inhabited islands.

Enteral and Parenteral Nutrition

Alternative routes of nutrient administration are available for patients who are unable to eat or digest sufficient food to prevent malnutrition. These routes include enteral (administered through the gastrointestinal tract) and parenteral (administered intravenously). This review details the clinical consequences of malnutrition, nutritional assessment, the benefits of nutrition support therapy, determining the nutrient prescription, special considerations in nutrition support therapy, aspects of obtaining enteral or parenteral access, monitoring of patients receiving nutrition support therapy, and complications and ethical issues associated with enteral and parenteral nutrition. Figures include algorithms showing the identification of malnutrition, the nutrition support decision process, and the approach to gastric residual monitoring; nasogastric tube displacement leading to pneumothorax; proper placement of a long or “midline” catheter versus a peripherally inserted central catheter; and photographs of a 43-year-old man with Crohn disease complicated by enterocutaneous fistula formation, distal small bowel obstruction, and evisceration of the small bowel after developing a pelvic abscess. Tables list acute illness- or injury-related malnutrition; chronic disease−related malnutrition; social or environmental circumstances−related malnutrition; indications and contraindications to enteral and parenteral nutrition; selected examples of predictive equations; electrolyte provision in parenteral nutrition; parenteral vitamin and trace element requirements; complications associated with enteral and parenteral nutrition; and indications, contraindications, and complications of gastrostomy tube placement. This review contains 6 highly rendered figures, 11 tables, and 167 references.

Application of semantic network visualization as a managerial support instrument in financial analyses

Modern information technology (IT) managerial support systems often utilize visualization as a fundamental form of presenting information. In this context, however, users require easy access and rapid retrieval of not only information, but also knowledge stored by the system. The current trend in research is to identify new methods of graphical presentation that can be used to visualize knowledge. One of the most promising trends in this area is the exploration of the ontological approach to knowledge representation, and the associated semantic network visualization techniques. This paper presents selected aspects of the practical application of semantic network visualization in support of decision-making processes in the narrow context of financial indicators analysis, and in the light of both the rational and the behavioral approach.

Participatory sustainability assessment for spatial planning: reflections from a pilot exercise in Flanders, Belgium

Sustainability is both an appealing and bewildering concept, subject to a range of interpretations. While this plurality of views can lead to innovative policy solutions to complex societal challenges, it can also lead to confusion and even decision paralysis. If sustainability is to guide decision-making, practical and user-friendly participatory decision-support processes are required. Sustainability assessment allows to systematically integrate sustainability considerations in decision-making. Flanders, Belgium’s northern region, has seen a recent boost of public policy initiatives for sustainability, which includes a stated interest in exploratory sustainability assessments in which the public can be included. A tailor-made approach, based on a modified nominal group technique (NGT), was developed and applied. The NGT-based exploratory sustainability assessment consisted of two rounds during which participants were asked to reflect first individually, and then collectively, about sustainability implications of spatial planning policy documents. The participants stressed the adaptability and user-friendliness of the approach, but also emphasized the difficulty to identify clear sustainability trade-offs. NGT does not allow for a full sustainability assessment on its own, but this pilot exercise shows it can be used as an exploratory sustainability assessment, which can be complemented with other methods and inputs in a later stage of decision-making. We provide a critical reflection on NGT, as a simple yet innovative method in support of participatory sustainability assessment.

Integrated Dynamic Energy Management for Steel Production

Abstract The steel industry is an important consumer of electrical energy having a significant impact on the electricity network and accounting to a significant part of production costs. Thus, there is the opportunity of closer cooperation between grid operators and steel industry to improve the power consumption prediction and actively contribute to a secure network operation. This paper aims to describe an overall dynamical approach for electricity demand monitoring and timely reactions to the grid situation, to avoid non flexible equipment disconnection, financial fines when deviating from energy contingent and contributing to the grid stability. Energy management, simulation, decision support procedures and process control tools will be integrated in an agent based system able to predict and manage power consumption.

Indicators of ecosystem potential for pollination and honey production

The estimation of the value of nature in terms of benefits derived by humans is becoming increasingly popular in environmental assessments and spatial planning worldwide. In line with this approach, the value of any ecosystem can be determined on the basis of its potential (capacity), or the actual amount of goods and services delivered (flow). The aim of this work was to develop indicators of the potential of ecosystems to deliver services related specifically to bees, i.e. to pollination and honey production. A new operational definition of ecosystem potential dedicated to the evaluation of bee-related services was introduced and applied. Two ratio scales were constructed, showing the potential abundance of nesting wild bees (indicating pollination) and the availability of honey substrates (indicating honey production). The expert assessment carried out was closely linked to real regional data. Specific values were assigned to 29 types of ecosystem relevant to bees and identified in the lowland rural landscape of Central Europe. The original scales for the indicators were then classified into the 0–10 ecosystem capacity scale. A specific study area in north-eastern Poland (815km2) was chosen to show a possible spatial pattern for ecosystem potential in relation to the two bee-related services.Dry grassland and early successional pine forests were assigned highest values in terms of pollination potential, as well as cropland, young swamp pine forests and dry grassland in the case of honey production. In turn, mature alder and riparian forests, together with wetlands, ranked lowest for both bee services. This study confirmed that ecosystem capacities to deliver bee services tend to contrast greatly with potentials as regards many other ecosystem services (e.g. carbon sequestration or erosion control). This obviously complicates management policies and requires that the concept of trade-offs be embraced. The proposed indicators, as combined with detailed mapping of ecosystem capacities differ from pan-European modelling in being of value to particular stakeholders, and in support of decision-making processes regarding beekeeping, farming and nature conservation.