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EWG-DSS Newsletter Nr. 9, Year 2010

EWG-DSS Newsletter Newsletter of the EURO Working Group on Decision Support System

In this issue

Editorial........................................ 1

EWG-DSS Online......................... 2

Recent Publications.................... 2

Interview ...................................... 4

Research Review ........................ 5

Call for Papers............................. 7

EWG-DSS Meetings .................... 8

Upcoming Events - DSS Stream EURO XXV ................................... 9

Group News................................ .9

EWG-DSS Members .................. 10

Contacting & Joining the EWG-DSS

.................................................... 10

Contributing to this Newsletter 11

Editorial Board The Newsletter of the EURO-WG on Decision Support Systems is currently edited by:

Fátima Dargam, Pascale Zaraté & Rita Ribeiro

Comments and announcements to next issues of the EWG-DSS Newsletter should be sent to F.Dargam@SimTechnology.com,

Zarate@irit.fr with the subject: “EWG-DSS Newsletter”.

Editorial by Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam & Rita Ribeiro (Coordination Board of the EURO Working Group on DSS since 2007)

Dear Euro Working Group members! Dear Friends!

We are happy to launch the 2010 edition of our Newsletter for you now! There are many interesting news in it! We are also proud of your response to our online participation! The EWG-DSS has been operating fully online since last year, not only with the help of the original Working Group EURO Homepage (http://www.euro-online.org/), but also with the creation of the EWG-DSS Blog (http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/ ) and with the EWG-DSS Group in the LinkedIn social network. These initiatives were part of our main goals, as coordinators of the EWG-DSS, of providing new ways to keep us working together, as well as of innovating our interaction approaches in order to have a better reach of our academic production within the various fields around Decision Support. In 2010, we have received the standard sponsorship from EURO for maintaining our Internet-based approaches active and up-to-date. This encourages us to plan further on our interaction via the Internet. Suggestions about improvements and volunteers to assist us on this issue are very welcome!

On the EUROXXIV in Lisbon last July, we had the chance of keeping up with group contacts. Among many research colleagues, we met the EWG-DSS member, Prof. Dragana Becejski-Vujaklija from the University of Belgrade. She informed us about the successful consequences that their 1st EWG-DSS Workshop has been providing them up to the current days and her collaboration team have send to us a report about this “collaboration follow-up”. It is now with great pleasure that we publish in this Newsletter issue the “success case” of research collaboration that has been established during the 2005-DSS Workshop, which Fátima Dargam has locally organized in Graz, Austria.

Apart from the usual sections, this year our Newsletter presents a very interesting interview with the Madeira founding member P1: Philip Powell. Moreover, you find here a list of recent publications that presents some research projects currently being developed by some of our group members; Call for Papers and for Conference Participation as well as general information about the group. We hope you enjoy reading it!

Yours Sincerely,

Pascale Zaraté, Rita Ribeiro & Fátima Dargam

Foto: Lisbon, 2010

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EWG-DSS Online EWG-DSS Mailing-List:

ewg-dss@irit.fr By using our mailing-list, the EWG-DSS members are able to send messages to all other members, allowing this way a one-to-one distribution of information about research events and calls for publications.

EWG-DSS Web-Links:

• EWG-DSS – Blog

http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/ The EWG-DSS blog is maintained by the Coordination Board. You should take as much advantage as possible of this fantastic interactive plataform, commenting the posts and suggesting new ones!

• EWG-DSS – EURO Homepage

http://www.euro-online.org/ Working Groups EURO Working Groups EWG Decision support systems

• EWG-DSS – IRIT Server

https://wwwsecu.irit.fr/listes/info/ewg-dss

All the EWG-DSS members are allowed to have access to this server. It contains all the EWG-DSS Newsletters’ pdf files; Call for Papers relevant for the group as well as project descriptions of group members in “Shared Documents”. Via the option “Review Members”, one is able to check the individual e-mail addresses of each member.

• EWG-DSS – LinkedIn Group

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1961459&trk=anet_ug_grppro

The Linked-In EWG-DSS Group has currently about 70 members.

This group is also open to Linked-In members, who would like to interact with the EWG-DSS group without being a member.

• EWG-DSS – Slideshare Account

http://www.slideshare.net/ewgdss

This account is open to any visitor and allows one to view the available pdf files, power-point files, etc. ♦

Recent Publication From members of the EWG-DSS: - Hernández, J.E., Poler, R., Mula, J., Lario, F.C. (2010). The reverse logistic process of an automobile supply chain network supported by a collaborative decision-making model. Group Decision and Negotiation . DOI: 10.1007/s10726-010-9205-7. - Hernández, J.E., Alemany, M.M.E, Lario, F.C., Poler, R. (2009). SCAMM-CPA: A Supply Chain Agent-Based Modelling Methodology That Supports a Collaborative Planning Process. Innovar. Vol. 19, No. 34, pp. 99-120. - Hernández, J.E., Mula, J., Ferriols, F. J. y Poler, R. (2008). A conceptual model for the production and transport planning process: An application to the automobile sector. Computers in Industry. Vol. 59, No. 8, pp. 842–852. - Hernández, J.E., Mula, J., Ferriols, F. J. (2008). A reference model for conceptual modelling of production planning processes. Production Planning & Control, Vol. 19, No. 8, pp. 725–734. - Hernández, J.E., Poler, R., Mula, J., Peidro, D. (2008). A collaborative knowledge management framework for supply chains. A UML-based model approach. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management. Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 77–103.

- Hernández, J.E., Poler, R., Mula, J., De La Fuente, D. (2010). “Collaborative tactical planning in multi-level supply chains supported by multiagent systems”, Springer (Ed.), pp. 260-267. ISBN: 978-3-642-14340-3. - Hernández, J.E., Poler, R., Mula, J., Lario, F.C. (2010). “A Decentralized Collaborative Replenishment Decision Making Model in the Automobile Supply Chain Sector”. In: Bridging the Socio-technical Gap in Decision Support Systems, Challenges for the Next Decade, IOS press (Ed.), Volume 212, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. ISBN: 978-1-60750-576-1. - Hernández, J.E., Poler, R., Mula, J. (2010) “An Interoperable enterprise architecture to support decentralized collaborative planning processes in supply chain networks”. Springer (Ed.), pp. 213-224. ISBN: 978-1-84996-256-8. - Hernández, J.E, Poler, R., Mula, J. (2009) “A supply chain architecture based on multi-agent systems to support decentralized collaborative processes”. In: Leveraging Knowledge for Innovation in Collaborative Networks, Springer (Ed.), pp. 128-135. ISBN: 978-3-642-04567-7. - ÖLÇER A.İ., “A hybrid approach for multi-objective combinatorial optimisation problems in ship design and shipping”, Computers & Operations Research, Part Special Issue: Bio-inspired Methods in Combinatorial Optimization, Vol. 35, Issue 9, pp 2760-2775, Sep. 2008. - S. Agostinho, A. M. Moreira, A. Marques, J. Araujo, R. Ferreira, R. Raminhos, R. Ribeiro, I. Brito, P. Chevalley. Aspect-oriented specification: a case study in Space domain. International Journal of Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, August (2010). - T. C. Pais, R. A. Ribeiro, L. F. Simões. Uncertainty in dynamically changing input data. In: Computational Intelligence in Complex Decision Systems.

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DaRuan (Ed), Atlantis Computational Intelligent Systems-Vol 2, Chapter 2, World Scientific (2010). ISBN: 978-90-78677-27- - Tiago Simas, R. A. Ribeiro, F. Pinheiro, J. Fernandes. I-DSS for Identifying Stars Degeneracy. In: Supplemental proceedings of the 15th International Conference of IFIP WG 8.3 on Decision Support Systems (DSS2010), Lisbon, July (2010). - Hesam Dashti, T.Simas, R. A. Ribeiro, A. Assadi, A. Moitinho. MK-means: Modified K-means clustering algorithm Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2010), Barcelona, Spain July (2010). - Clement Bourdarias, Reynaud, S., Drai, R., Simões, L. F., and Ribeiro, R. A. Optimized and flexible multi-criteria decision making for hazard avoidance. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual AAS Rocky Mountain Guidance and Control Conference, Colorado, USA. American Astronautical Society. (2010) - Abel Pinto, Isabel L. Nunes and Rita A. Ribeiro Qualitative Model for Risk Assessment in Construction Industry: A Fuzzy Logic Approach. In: Emerging Trends in Technological Innovation. First IFIP WG 5.5/SOCOLNET Doctoral conference on Computing Electrical and Industrial Systems, DoCEIS2010 Ed: L.M Camarinha-Mtos, P. Pereira, L. Ribeiro, Caparica, Portugal, February (2010) :105-110. WoK - Abel Pinto, Isabel L. Nunes and Rita A. Ribeiro, Framework for Ensuring Risk Assessment Completeness in Construction Industry, in 17th World Congress on Ergonomics, 9-14 Aug, Beijing-Rep Pop. China (2009) - C. Gomes; R. A Ribeiro; A. Pimentel, A SWDSS – An experience in transforming a single system into a software product line. Proceedings of the 4th Iberian Conference on Information Systems and Technologies, June

(2009), Povoa de Varzim PORTUGAL : 161-166 . WoK. - Pascale Zaraté, Systèmes Coopératifs d'Aide à la Décision: Contributions conceptuelles et fonctionnelles, EUE : Editions Universitaires Européennes, Vol. ISBN 978-613-1-52521-6, September 2010. - Pascale Zaraté, Ana Respicio. Technologies for Collaborative Decision Making. In: International Journal of Decision Support System Technology, IGI Global, Hershey - USA, Vol. 1 N. 4, October 2009. - Pascale Zaraté. Formal Tools and Methodologies for DSS. In: European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, Vol. 195 N. 3, June 2009. - Noria Taghezout, Pascale Zaraté. Supporting a multicriterion decision making and multi-agent negotiation in manufacturing systems. In: Intelligent Decision Technologies, IOS Press, Vol. 3 N. 3, p. 139-155, 2009. - Noria Taghezout, Abdelkader Adla, Pascale Zaraté. A Hybrid Approach for Designing an Adaptive User Interface: IDSS and BDI Agents. In: Communications in Computer and Information Science, Springer, Vol. 29, p. 164-182, May 2009. - Noria Taghezout, Abdelkader Adla, Pascale Zaraté. A Multi-agent Framework for Group Decision Support System: Application to a Boiler Combustion Management System (GLZ). In: International Journal of Software Engineering and Its Applications, Science & Engineering Research Support Center (SERSC), Vol. 3 N. 2, p. 9-20,May 2009. - Raphaele Théry, Pascale Zaraté. Energy planning: Towards a multi-level and multicriteria decision making structure. In: Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer, Vol. 17, p. 265-274,July 2009. - Catherine Azzaro-Pantel, Pascale Zaraté. Mutual Benefits of two

Multi-Criteria Analysis Methodo-logies: A Case Study for Batch Plant Design. In: Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, Elsevier, Vol. 22 N. 4-5, p. 546-556, 2009. - Abdelkader Adla, Pascale Zaraté, Jean-Luc Soubie. Case and Model Based Hybrid Reasoning for Group Decision Making. In the Proceedings of the IFIP WG8.3 International Conference on Decision Support Systems Vol. 212, Ana Respicio, Frédéric Adam, Gloria Phillips-Wren, Carlos Teixeira (Eds.), IOS Press, p. 309-320, July 2010. - Noria Taghezout, Pascale Zaraté. Using Multi-Agent Based Simulation in an IDSS for Evaluating Performance in Flow-shop Manufacturing System. In the Proceedings of the IFIP WG8.3 International Conference on Decision Support Systems Vol. 212, Ana Respicio, Frédéric Adam, Gloria Phillips-Wren, Carlos Teixeira (Eds.), IOS Press, p. 285-308, July 2010. - Hassan Ait-Haddou, Guy Camilleri, Pascale Zaraté. Parameters calculation of brainstorming dynamic models. In the Proceedings of Group Decision and Negotiation (GDN 2010), Gert-Jan De Vreede (Eds.), Center for Collaboration Science, p. 24-26, June 2010. - Philippe Viguié, Pascale Zaraté, Jean-Luc Soubie. CSCW Implementation in Entreprise : The NIBBLING method (regular paper). In the Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD 2010), Vol. ISBN 978-1-4244-6763-1, Weiming Shen, Ning Gu, Tun Lu, Jean Paul Barthès (Eds.), IEEE, p. 77-82, April 2010. Book Announcements Bridging the Socio-technical Gap in Decision Support Systems: Challenges for the Next Decade.

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Editors: A. Respício, F. Adam, G. Phillips-Wren, C. Teixeira and J. Telhada. Collection: Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Volume 212, IOS Press, NL. July 2010, 616 pp., hardcover, ISBN: 978-1-60750-576-1. (Orders via email to: MAlmeida.lisboa@abreu.pt) Supporting Real Time Decision-Making: The Role of Context in Decision Support on the Move.

Springer, Series: Annals of Information Systems, Vol. 13. Editors: Burstein, Frada; Brézillon, Patrick; Zaslavsky, Arkady. 1st Edition, 2011, 320 p. 68 illus., Softcover, Series: Annals of Information Systems, Vol. 13, Springer.ISBN: 978-1-4419-7405-1

• Download Table of contents (pdf, 1.4MB)

Thanks to all members who contributed to this session. ♦

Interview

Philip Powell

“My research has always been interest-driven.”

This year the coordinators of the EWG-DSS had the pleasure to interview our long-time colleague: Philip Powell, also a founding member of the EWG-DSS since 1989 in Madeira. Philip was also in Lisbon by the occasion of the XXIV EURO Conference, and we had the chance to meet within a relaxing dinner. Among various subjects, we talked about Philip’s new position as Executive Dean and Professor of Management in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics at Birkbeck, University of London. The result of this evening is reported to you here.

We congratulate Philip for his career achievements so far and we also thank him for giving us the opportunity of producing this exciting interview for our Newsletter. We hope you enjoy reading it! EWG-DSS: Tell us about your recent move to your current job and the challenges ahead. PP: Birkbeck is one of the colleges of the University of London with a history stretching back to the 1830’s. It is unique in the UK in that it is a research-intensive institution that specialises in flexible teaching. Most of our students study part-time and are working. This presents an

interesting set of opportunities and challenges. On one hand, our students are mature, eager to learn and bring a lot of experience to the classroom. For example, the average age of our undergraduates is mid-30s, while that of our post-graduates is late 20s. On the other hand, much of our teaching is done in the evening and students face many more work and family challenges that typical students. A consequence of being atypical is that government tends to forget you when making arbitrary policy changes. We suffered from this recently when 30% of our teaching funds were removed. Excellent lobbying and media pressure got us replacement student numbers and the College restructured into five new schools with new executive deans and devolved powers – which is where I came in. My job is to develop a successful school especially by exploiting the synergies between my departments – Management, Organisational Psychology, Economics Maths & Stats, and Computer Science and Information Systems. We have 150 staff, 2500 students and a turnover of 20million euros. As a research-intensive institution I need to ensure my staff have the opportunities, time, space and funding to develop their work as I did. EWG-DSS: How is it going? What have you achieved in terms of results so far? PP: We are one year in and, while it has not been an easy ride, we have launched a raft of new programmes, increased student applications by 46%, achieved some measure of integration and moved one department to a new home. We exceeded our targets for last year and I hope we can do the same again this year. EWG-DSS: How did you come to be an academic manager? PP: I’ve been an academic for a long time – I was a founder member of the EURO DSS Group (with the moniker ‘P1’) - and I have held every position in the academic

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hierarchy – research assistant, teaching fellow, experimental officer, lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor, deputy dean and now executive dean. Along the way I managed academic units of increasing size – research teams, units, centres, teaching groups and departments. I became interested in academic management and did a part time MBA in Higher Education Management at the Institute of Education. The move to deputy dean at Bath was a very steep learning curve as there was something of a crisis, but we turned it around and now I am doing much the same at Birkbeck EWG-DSS: Does your research background help you in your present post? PP: My research has always been interest-driven. Either the topic themselves are interesting or there was the chance to work with interesting people. So, I’ve working in DSS, IS, supply chain management, OR, e-business, knowledge management, strategy and accounting. All these come into play when you are setting up a new school from scratch. I have also branched out into researching higher education management in the last few years and understanding how resource allocation models work and funding philosophies can be useful. EWG-DSS: You are in the DSS area for a long time. How did it start? Tell us more about your research career. PP: After doing a few other things, I started my academic career as a temporary research assistant on an inflation accounting project and I’m glad I did not stick with this. At the time, the department was looking for someone to become interested in IT and I saw an opportunity and tried to make myself indispensible. I was lucky enough to participate in a number of very useful training events. I was part of the International Teachers Programme in 1986 in HEC near Paris, then participated in the Euro Summer Institute DSS in Madeira in 1989 and the NATO Advanced Study

Institute's Programme in Tuscany. At these places I met a lot of very interesting people, many of whom I’m still in contact with and some I have done extensive research with. Meeting the right people at the right time was instrumental in encouraging me to continue with an academic career. I attended many of the early DSS conferences and was Secretary EURO Working Group on DSS for five years, but gradually moved my research more into the information systems field. I became Managing Editor of the Information Systems Journal and President of the UK Academy for Information Systems. I maintained an interest in DSS and more recently have tried to work more in this field. It is great to see old friends again and to see how well everyone is doing. EWG-DSS: Are you tied to a desk now or do you still have time for research? PP: Unfortunately, academic management is not really a part-time activity so my time for research has been limited in the last 7 years. I certainly cannot continue to do the IS research in small firms that I did for 12 years as I don’t have whole weeks free for case analysis. Nevertheless, I do try to maintain a research profile and I have an honorary chair in Groningen University in the Netherlands. This coupled with my family being in Brussels and our links to Portugal means that I spend a lot of time on trains but they can be good places to read, write and think, and with ubiquitous IT and communications one can manage a lot virtually. I hope, once things are more settled in London, to manage to carve out a bit more contiguous research time and to take on a couple of new PhD students. EWG-DSS: What are your plans for the future? PP: The financial crisis has certainly made working in publically-funded higher education much more uncertain but I’d like to think that the international groupings that we have will sustain and develop more. I have a five

year renewable contract in London and hope that something else interesting presents itself at the right time. I certainly hope that my contacts with the excellent people in the DSS world I have met over the last 21 years endure and that we will all be able to celebrate the next 21 years together somewhere warm with good food and wine. I think that some very interesting new avenues of research are opening up in DSS. For example, we have witnessed the amazing predictive power of Paul the octopus during the recent World Cup. Imagine if this ability could be harnessed as part of a DSS. And we have not even begun to research the decision powers of other cephalopods – and there are 800 species. EWG-DSS: Thank you, it’s been remarkable talking to you ! ♦

Research Review Description from Research Projects from EWG-DSS Members

Forest Fire Detection Systems via Multicriteria Disaggregation – Aggrega-tion Approach: The Case of Lycabettus Hill Athanasios Spyridakos, Ioannis Psaromiligkos, Lazaros Vryzidis, Maria Litsardaki, Ioannis Salmon. Technological Educational Institute of Piraeus, General Department of Mathematics, Athens, Greece.

Location of fire detection units in forests is influenced by a set of conflicting parameters representing effectiveness (degree of screening, degree of plating), cost of installation and maintenance, reliability and security. This research work proposes a multicriteria methodological frame based on disaggregation – aggregation UTA II method and MIIDAS system in order to support the selection of positions and the arrangement of the fire detection units in the forest.

The methodological frame was utilized for a real world application concerning the design

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of Lycabettus Hill fire detection system.

The fire detection systems

consist of three separate subsystems (as the figure shows above):

•The fire detection units subsystem, which is actually a net of sensors (thermal or video cameras, smoke sensors, meteorological sensors) placed in the forest with power supply links or units.

•The communication subsystem that supports the communication between the units and the central control system

•The control center, which usually consists of a set of servers with specialized software and display units. A simple configuration consists of two servers, one for the management of the system devices and the communication network, and another server with special software for image processing and fire alarm facilities as well as geographical information software and a set of display and data presentation and storing devices. A simple control center consists of one server (control center) with special software for the management of the system devices and the communication network, one server with special software for image processing including automatic fire alarm facilities and a set of display and data presentation and storing devices including geographical information software.

This technology can provide an effective solution for early fire detection, keeping the cost low and at satisfactory levels. However, there are critical points related to the optimization of the system functionality and effectiveness that need further research. Such a

critical point is the fire detection units’ location in the region of the forests, so as to achieve the best possible results.

The problem of FDU location is complex and essential to address a major environmental hazard such as forest fires. This research work took place during a study implemented for the fire protection of Urban Forest in Athens and the location problem came up during the phase of the Fire Detection System Design.

The application constitutes

good practice of the utilization of Disaggregation-Aggregation Multi-criteria decision aid approach to address operational problems. The approach requires significant interaction with the decision maker in order to assess the additive utility model the outcome compensate, while a major problem such as the fire detection and prevention can be considered at a satisfactory level. Further research work will be done for other cases concerning large (non urban) forests in Greece. Prevention of the fire risks or early fire detection are the key points to eliminate the catastrophic consequences for the planet and the human life of forest fires.

A comprehensive research report about this project, including all the details about the methodology implemented can be obtained from the authors. Contact Maria Litsardaki <marial@teipir.gr>. ♦

News about the EWG-DSS project: A Social-Academic Network for the EWG-DSS Fátima Dargam, Pascale Zaraté & Rita Ribeiro

In the DSS Stream of the EURO XXIV European Conference on Operational Research, last July in Lisbon, we have presented the state of the art of our project, with the abstract below: “How does the EURO Working Group on DSS interact? A social-academic network analysis 1989-2008”

“This work reports the advances on the analysis of the social-academic network, created for the EURO Working Group on Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS), in order to represent the various relationships that link academically its 105 members. We show how the group’s collaboration dynamics have evolved since its foundation in 1989, up to the present moment: a period of over 20 years. This project revisits the current areas of research of the professionals involved, as a by-product. Moreover, the social-academic network has already shown to encourage new research and promote further collaboration among the academic members of the group in common projects and joint-publications. In this paper further network analysis is presented, so that some concluding factors about the group could be better explained.”

The project has not yet finished and we still count on the participation and collaboration of the members of the EWG-DSS to update its database of publications for its next version. As soon as we are ready to process more inputs from the group, we will announce it via our mailing list, as well as via our Blog and our LinkedIn group. Thanks for your continuous support! ♦

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Call for Papers Conferences ORP3-2011 - EURO Conference for Young OR Researchers. September 13th - 17th, 2011. Cádiz, Spain.

The ORP3 is the EURO peripatetic conference designed for young OR researchers and practitioners, which objective is to promote scientific and social exchanges. It will be held in Cádiz (Spain) from 13th to September 17th, 2011.

More information about this event can be found in the Conference’s Homepage: http://orp3.uca.es/. ♦

BALCOR-2011 – The 1st International Symposium & 10th Balkan Conference on Operational Research. BALCOR-2011 - September 23rd- 25th, 2011. Thessaloniki, Greece.

The 1st International Symposium & 10th Balkan Conference on Operational Research will be held at the University of Macedonia, Economic and Social Sciences in Thessaloniki, Greece, September 22 - 25, 2011. The conference will be co-organized by the Macedonia - Thrace Branch of Hellenic Operational Research Society and the University of Macedonia.

The general aim of the Conference is to facilitate the exchange of scientific and technical information related to Operational Research and to promote international co-operation especially among the Balkan countries. More information about this event can be found in the Conference’s site: http://balcor.uom.gr/ ♦

IESM-2011 – The 4th International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Systems Management. May 25th- 27th, 2011. ENIM-Metz, France.

The global economy and the recent developments in IC technologies have significantly modified the business organization of enterprises and the way that they do business. New forms of organizations such as extended enterprises, networked enterprises, supply chain networks, etc., turn to appear and they are quickly adopted by most leading enterprises. The evolvement from single enterprise with a high vertical range of manufacture towards enterprise networks offers new business opportunities especially for small and medium enterprises that are usually more flexible than larger companies are.

This edition of IESM aims to bring researchers and professionals from all industrial engineering and service sciences disciplines together to discuss issues and share their research and development results and experience. Authors are invited to submit their original and unpublished work.

More information about this event can be found in the Conference’s site: http://www.iesm11.org/ . ♦

MCDM2011 - The 21st International Conference on Multiple Criteria and Decision Making.

June 13th to 17th, 2011. University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

The theme of the 21st International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making is “Environment and Policy”, which are active areas of application of MCDM tools in Finland, as well as around the world. The conference aims to bring together researchers and practitioners who address multiple criteria decision making. The Conference will be held in the Agora Building, located on the Mattilanniemi campus of the University of Jyväskylä.

For further information about this Conference, please check the site: http://www.jyu.fi/mcdm2011 ♦

EURO XXV, Vilnius, Lithuania. July 8-11th, 2012.

The 25th European Conference on Operational Research "EURO XXV", on the subject "OR - connecting sciences" will be organized in Vilnius, by the Lithuanian OR Society, during the period of 8-11 July, 2012. More information about it will be

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available at the Conference Homepage: www.euro-2012.lt

As usual the EWG-DSS will organize in this Conference a DSS Stream. Call for Participation will follow in 2011.

An initial presentation about the conference’s city and its organizing committee can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/ssakpi/euro-xxv-presentation . ♦

DSS2012: The 16th IFIP

WG 8.3 Open Conference. Theme: "Fusing DSS into the Fabric of the Context”, Anavissos, Greece, June 28-30th, 2012.

The IFIP Working group 8.3 on Decision Support Systems aims at the development of approaches for applying information systems technology to increase the effectiveness of decision-making in situations where the computer system can support and enhance human judgements in the performance of tasks that have elements which cannot be specified in advance. The main scope of the WG 8.3 is to improve ways of synthesizing and applying relevant work from resource disciplines to practical implementation of systems that enhance decision support capability. The resource disciplines include: information technology; artificial intelligence; cognitive psychology; decision theory; organisational theory; operations research and modeling.

The Call for Papers will be issued in August 2011. Details of the venue for DSS2012 can be downloaded via the link: http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/ifip-dss/files/page0_1.ppt ♦

Journal Announcement IJDSST new Editor-in-Chief

We are happy to announce that Pascale Zaraté has recently taken over the position of Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of

Decision Support System Technology (IJDSST)!

The primary objective of the IJDSST Journal is to provide comprehensive coverage for DMSS technology issues.

The issues can involve, among other things, new hardware and software for DMSS, new models to deliver decision making support, dialog management between the user and system, data and model base management within the system, output display and presentation, DMSS operations, and DMSS technology management. Since the technology’s purpose is to improve decision making, the articles are expected to link DMSS technology to improvements in the process and outcomes of the decision making process. This link can be established theoretically, mathema-tically, or empirically in a syste-matic and scientific manner.

Call for Papers (Link): All paper submissions and inquiries should be directed to: Prof. Pascale Zaraté Editor-in-Chief International Journal of Decision Support System Technology Toulouse University IRIT Team SMAC Email : zarate@irit.fr http://www.irit.fr/~Pascale.Zarate ♦

EWG-DSS Meetings List of all past EWG-DSS Meetings,/ Workshops & Mini-Conferences:

. Fontainebleau (France) – 1990;

. Bruges (Belgium) – 1991;

. Hungary – 1992;

. Sintra (Portugal) – 1993;

. Turku (Finland) – 1994;

. Samos (Greece) – 1995;

. Ispra (Italy) – 1996;

. Bruges (Belgium) – 1997;

. Granada (Spain) – 1998;

. Turku (Finland) – 1999;

. Toulouse (France) – 2000;

. Caiscas (Portugal) – 2001;

. Bruges (Belgium) – 2002;

. Luxembourg – 2003;

. Istanbul, (Turkey) – 2003;

. Prato, (Italy) – 2004;

. Graz (Austria) – 2005;

. London (UK) – 2006;

. Reykavik (Iceland) – 2006;

. Montreal (Canada) – 2007;

. Prague (Czech Republic) – 2007;

. Toulouse (France) – 2008;

. Bonn (Germany) – 2009;

. Lisbon (Portugal) – 2010.

EWG-DSS Meeting 2010 In 2010, the EWG-DSS annual meeting took place in Lisbon, during the EURO XXIV – International European Conference on Operational Research. Basically, the meeting was part of the DSS Stream – Sessions: Models for Decision Making and Decision Analysis & Applications in Decision Making and Decision Analysis of the conference, which counted with the presentation of the following papers (apart from the one about “A Social-Academic Network for the EWG-DSS” already mentioned before): “Survey forest fire detection systems via multicriteria disaggregation – aggregation approach: the case of Lycabettus Hill” Authors: Athanasios Spyridakos; Yannis Psaromiligkos; Lazaros Vryzidis; Maria Litsardaki; Ioannis Salmon. “The PROBE Decision Support System and Capital Budgeting: an application to the electricity sector”

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Authors: João Carlos Lourenço; Carlos Bana e Costa; João Oliveira Soares. “Influence of the Criteria in the Bayesian AHP” Authors: Pilar Gargallo; José María Moreno-Jimenez; Alfredo Altuzarra. “Structuring and assessing large and complex decision problems using MCDA” Authors: Michael Bruhn Barfod; Steen Leleur. “DECERNS WebSDSS: Web-based Spatial Decision Support System for Multicriteria Decision Analysis” Authors: Boris Yatsalo; Sergey Gritsyuk. “Transitioning of Multistatic Tactical Planning Aid (MSTPA) towards Decision Support” Author: Christopher Strode. “Search Analysis to Locate a Sustainable Data Center in Portugal using Geographica Information Systems” Authors: Luis C. Dias; Miguel Covas; Carlos Santos Silva. The abstracts of the work above can be found in the proceedings of the EURO XXIV conference, TC-37 pp.166-167 and TD-37 p.187. ♦

Upcoming Events:

“DSS Stream at the EURO XXV in Vilnius” EURO XXV Vilnius, Lithuania. July 8-11th, 2012.

EWG-DSS Stream at the EUROXXV in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2012.

Stream: “Decision Support System“ Organizers: Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam & Rita Ribeiro

As usual the members of the EWG -DSS managing board will organize a DSS Stream and offer the possibility for researchers in the area of Decision Making to present their on-going or finished projects within the EURO XXV European Conference on Operational Research, in Vilnious in 2012.

We hope to see you there!

EWG-DSS Group News A Success Report on

Research Collaboration within the EURO Working Group on Decision Support Systems

On the EUROXXIV in Lisbon in July 2010, one of the import things that we did, apart from chairing our DSS stream and attending interesting sessions, was to make new contacts and also keeping up with old ones. Among many friends and research colleagues, we also met Prof. Dragana Becejski-Vujaklija from the University of Belgrade, who is a EWG-DSS member for more than 5 years by now. During our short meeting, she has informed us about the successful consequences that their 1st EWG-DSS Workshop has been providing them up to the current days. We have gladly received that information as a compliment. It is for sure very nice to notice that the efforts applied on organizing EWG-DSS meetings compensate over the years. Dragana and her collaboration team were then invited to send us a report about this “collaboration follow-up” for our Newsletter. So they promptly did. And they did it very well! It is now with great pleasure that we, the coordinators of the EWG-DSS, publish here the “success case” of research collaboration that has been established during the 2005-DSS Workshop, which Fátima Dargam has locally organized in Graz, Austria. We are very grateful to Kathrin Kirchner, Dragana Becejski-Vujaklija, and Boris Delibasic for their joint-report below.

A “Follow-up” from the Graz DSS Workshop in 2005

“In 2005, on the Joint-Workshop on Decision Support Systems, Experimental Economics & e-Participation in Graz, organized by the EWG on DSS no more than 80 participants took part. However, it was an excellent opportunity to meet people that are doing similar research and to make strong contacts. In comparison to the EURO conference, where several thousand people participate, these small workshops are very efficient with respect to contacts that can be made. At the Graz joint workshop in 2005, an excellent cooperation has been established. We suppose there are more of them, however we will only report on our experience. Prof. Dr. Dragana Becejski-Vujaklija and Dr. Boris Delibasic from the University of Belgrade (Faculty of Organizational Sciences) and Dr. Kathrin Kirchner from the University of Jena (School of Business Administration and Economics) as well as Dr. Frantisek Sudzina (Copenhagen Business School) established since that workshop a fruitful cooperation.

Since 2006 Kathrin Kirchner has given courses in Belgrade and Boris Delibasic in Jena on a yearly basis. Dragana Becejski-Vujaklija has lectured courses at the University of Jena since 2009. The faculties in Jena and Belgrade have signed a memorandum of understanding and are working together in several projects. Some joint publications have already been published (listed below). Currently, researchers from both faculties are participating in a joint project funded by the DAAD (German academic exchange service). This year, a student from Belgrade awarded three months scholarship for research in Jena. The cooperation between the two Universities is performed based on several topics. Decision Support Systems, Data Mining, Information Systems, Software Engineering and Operations Research are among them. In 2009 a Serbian delegation from the University of Belgrade visited the University of Jena and talked about possibilities

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of broadening this fruitful cooperation. German professors and researchers have visited Belgrade and Serbian conferences several times, and are nowadays included as respected reviewers in several Serbian Journals that are published in English.

The cooperation between Jena and Copenhagen also resulted in some joint publications. Furthermore, Kathrin Kirchner lectured at Copenhagen Business School via Erasmus program. We are very happy we had the opportunity to meet in Graz in 2005.”

Kathrin Kirchner

Dragana Becejski-Vujaklija

Boris Delibasic

Selected Publications:

1. Kathrin Kirchner, Boris Delibasic, Milan Vukicevic: “Designing clustering process with reusable components”, Journal InfoM, vol. 9, no. 34 (original in Serbian, abstract in English also available at http://www.infom.org.rs/brojevi/2010-34.htm )

2. Boris Delibasic, Kathrin Kirchner, Johannes Ruhland: “COMPONENT-BASED SOFTWARE FOR CLUSTERING IN DATA MINING – A PROTOTYPE IN MATLAB, SymORG 2010″, XII International Symposium Conference Proceedings, Zlatibor, Serbia, 2010.

3. Delibasic B, Kirchner K, Ruhland J (2008) Pattern language – A Novel Facilitator for Data Mining, IFORS, Operations Research Society of South Africa,page 71

4. Delibašić, B., Kirchner, K., Ruhland, J. (2008) A Pattern-Based Data Mining Approach, Data Analysis, Machine Learning and Applications, Springer, p. 327-334. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78246-9_39, ISBN: 978-3-540-78239-1

5. Delibasic B, Kirchner K, Ruhland J, Jovanovic M, Vukicevic

M (2009) Reusable components for partitioning clustering algorithms, Artificial Intelligence Review 32 (1), p 59-75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10462-009-9133-6, ISSN: 0269-2821

6. Kirchner, K., Delibašić, B., Vukićević, M. (2010) Designing the data mining process with reusable components (in Serbian), infoM 34, p. 23-29.UDC 004.89:004.738.5, ISSN: 1451-4397.

7. Delibašić B, Kirchner K, Ruhland J (2010) Component-based software for clustering in data mining – A prototype in Matlab, In Proceedings of the 12th SYMORG conference, Faculty of Organizational Sciences, Zlatibor, Serbia. ISBN: 978-86-7680-216-6.

8. Kirchner K, Delibasic B, Jovanovic M, Vukicevic M, Ruhland J (2010) WhiBo – A platform for component-based design of partitioning cluster algorithms, In Proceedings of the 24th conference EURO, Association of European Operational Research Societies. ♦

EWG-DSS Members The EWG-DSS group has now over 130 registered members. The updated list of all members of the group is available upon request to Pascale Zaraté or Fátima Dargam. Changes to this list should also be reported to both of them.

Via the EWG-DSS – IRIT Server the registered group members of the EWG-DSS are able to contact directly each other by using the e-mail address list available in this environment (option “Review Members”).

In the EWG-DSS LinkedIn Group there are professionals who are not yet members of the Working Group. These researchers will soon be contacted by the EWG-DSS managing board, so that they can also participate in the EWG-DSS as registered members. If you are one of them and you already know you would like to register as a EWG-DSS, do not wait for our contact. Write to us! Thanks! ♦

Contacting the EWG-DSS

The EURO-WG on Decision Support Systems is currently head by the Coordination Board:

Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam & Rita Ribeiro

(Coordination Board of the EURO Working Group on DSS since 2007)

For updates or for joining EWG-DSS, please contact: Pascale Zarate E-mail: zarate@irit.fr IRIT – Equipe CSC INPT – ENSIACET – GI 118 route de Narbonne 31062 Toulouse cedex 4 FRANCE

EWG-DSS Online Links:

EURO Web: http://www.euro.online.org

EWG-DSS Blog: http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/

EWG-DSS LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=1961459&trk=anet_ug_hm

EWG-DSS Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/ewgdss/

EWG-DSS IRIT Server: https://wwwsecu.irit.fr/listes/info/ewg-dss

EWG-DSS Mailing List: ewg-dss@irit.fr

If you need more information about the group, please contact us or visit our web-site: http://www.euro-online.org or our EWG-DSS Blog: http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/. ♦

Assisting the EWG-DSS The EWG-DSS Managing Board is looking for members who would like to help us with some managing activities. It is not too much work to be done and it brings the possibility of participation in the managing board in the future.

If you are interested, contact us: Zarate@irit.fr,

F.Dargam@SimTechnology.com Thank you!

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Contributing to this Newsletter Every member of the EWG-DSS is very welcome to contribute to this Newsletter.

Subjects can be related to:

• Recent Publications

• PhD Dissertations

• Book Presentations / Reviews

• Research Group Presentations

• Research Views and Perspectives

• Forthcoming Events

• General Announcements

Contributions to the EWG-DSS Newsletter should be sent to one of the email addresses below with the subject: “EWG-DSS Newsletter”. F.Dargam@SimTechnology.com Zarate@irit.fr