Special issue on intelligent decision support systems based on soft computing and their applications in real-world problems

Societal and technological trends make decision environments more and more complex. The emergence of the intelligent decision making technology provides a good decision support to deal with these complex decision making problems, and soft computing plays a core role in the intelligent decision making technology. In recent years, intelligent decision support systems based on soft computing have attracted the attention of both, academic researchers and practitioners in a wide range of disparate areas from computing science, engineering, operations research, economics and also management. Intelligent decision support systems based on soft computing are of great importance to deal with complex decision environments, and involve the design of mathematical models for modeling decision problems, the use of different information technologies (such as the Web and social networks) and artificial intelligence tools (such as computational intelligence tools).