Managing Information to Support the Decision Making Process

Decision-making is a crucial activity during the planning, design and operation of artefacts. To make a decision several alternatives must be evaluated and compared, which are tasks that require information, knowledge and expertise. A system that organises and manages the knowledge associated with every alternative and links ideas, arguments and issues can greatly improve and facilitate the decision making process. This paper presents how an Issue Based Information System (IBIS) implemented in Compendium (http://compendium.open.ac.uk) has been extended with new functionalities such as access to a toolkit of Multi-Criteria Decision Methods (MCDM), the ability to propagate values throughout the decision records and to perform sensitivity analysis of the recommended decisions with respect to a parameter. These additional functionalities enable the applicability of the system in the support of decisions that require not only argumentation, but also numerical evaluation of the properties of the alternatives such as those proposed during the design, planning and operation of engineering artefacts.

[1]  R. Ocampo-Pérez,et al.  Adsorption of Fluoride from Water Solution on Bone Char , 2007 .

[2]  Rob H. Bracewell,et al.  Capturing design rationale , 2009, Comput. Aided Des..

[3]  René Bañares-Alcántara,et al.  Design support systems for process engineering—III. Design rationale as a requirement for effective support , 1997 .

[4]  Jintae Lee,et al.  What's in Design Rationale? , 1991, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[5]  Raymond McCall.  PHI : A Conceptual Foundation For Design Hypermedia , 1990 .

[6]  Enrico Motta,et al.  Compendium: Making Meetings into Knowledge Events , 2001 .

[7]  Maarten Sierhuis,et al.  Hypermedia support for argumentation-based rationale: 15 years on from gIBIS and QOC , 2005 .

[8]  Maarten Sierhuis,et al.  Facilitated hypertext for collective sensemaking: 15 years on from gIBIS , 2001, Hypertext.

[9]  Jisoo Park,et al.  Developing a knowledge management system for storing and using the design knowledge acquired in the process of a user-centered design of the next generation information appliances , 2011 .

[10]  Richard M. Young,et al.  Options and Criteria: Elements of design space analysis , 1991 .

[11]  Martha R. Contreras-Valenzuela,et al.  Automatic Identification of Operational Problems in a Chemical Process , 2010 .

[12]  Kuntz Werner,et al.  Issues as Elements of Information Systems , 1970 .

[13]  Thomas P. Moran,et al.  Questions, Options, and Criteria: Elements of Design Space Analysis , 1991, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[14]  Evangelos Triantaphyllou,et al.  Multi-criteria Decision Making Methods: A Comparative Study , 2000 .

[15]  Jeff Conklin,et al.  Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems , 2005 .

[16]  Ignasi Rodríguez-Roda,et al.  Design of Wastewater Treatment Plants Using a Conceptual Design Methodology , 2002 .