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EWG-DSS NewsletterEWG-DSS NewsletterEWG-DSS NewsletterEWG-DSS NewsletterNr. 1, Year 2002

EWG-DSS NewsletterNewsletter of the EURO WorkingGroup on Decision Support System

In this issue Editorial ............................... 1

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

Perspectives ....................... 2

Research Review................ 2

EWG-DSS Meetings............ 3

Upcoming Events ............... 3

Contributing to this letter ... 3

EWG-DSS Members ........... 4

Contacting the EWG-DSS .. 4

Joining the EWG-DSS ........ 4

Editorial Board

The Newsletter of the EURO-WGon Decision Support Systems iscurrently edited by:

Fátima DargamPascale Zaraté

And revised by:

Philip Powell

Comments and announcementsto next issues of the EWG-DSSNewsletter should be sent toF.Dargam@SimTechnology.comor Zarate@irit.fr with the subject:“EWG-DSS Newsletter”.

Editorialby Pascale Zaraté (Current Head of the EURO Working Group on DSS)

The EWG-DSS group was created in Madeira (Portugal) during the EuroSummer Institute on DSS in May 1989. Researchers belonging to this groupmeet each year in different countries. The first meeting was held inFontainebleau (France) in 1990; the second in Bruges (Belgium) in 1991, thismeeting was organised together with the first Mini Euro Conference devoted toDSS, organised by J.P. Brans. The third meeting of the group took place inHungary in 1992; and the fourth in Sintra (Portugal) in 1993. Then the groupmigrated to a cold climate and the fifth meeting was organised in Turku(Finland) in 1994. The sixth meeting happened again in a warm land, in Samos(Greece) in 1995. The seventh meeting was held in Ispra (Italy) in 1996; thenagain in Bruges in 1997, together with the second Mini Euro Conferencedevoted to DSS, organised by J.P. Brans. Following the second Brugesmeeting, our previous chairman Tawfik Jelassi organised the ninth meeting inGranada Spain) in 1998. For the tenth birthday the group went again to Turku in1999. In 2000 the meeting was held in Toulouse (France) and I was chosen asthe new chairperson during this meeting. In 2001 the EWG-DSS group met inCascais (Portugal). In 2002, our meeting took place together with the Mini EuroConference devoted to DSS, in Brussels (Belgium) at the VUB from March 24thto 27th, chaired by J.P. Brans and T. Jelassi. The conference consisted of fivedistinct themes: DSS; Chairperson: P. Zaraté; E + M Commerce; Chairman: T.Jelassi; Multicriteria Analysis; Chairperson: M. Roubens; Human CenteredProcesses (HCP); Chairman: G. Coppin and J.P. Barthelemy; Prometheus(ethic movement) Chairman: J.P. Brans and M. Despontin.

During these thirteen years, the DSS theme has evolved and we can nowsee that Information Technologies have had a great impact on the design ofsuch systems. DSSs continue to exist in isolation using classical techniquesand methodologies to support Decision-Making, as for example in MultiCriteriaDecision-Making. Animating this field that is more complex, developing newmethodologies and systems represents a challenge for us as researchers.

As you know, the European Commission is preparing the new FrameProgramme (FP6) on Research and Development as part of its EuropeanResearch Area policy. More information about the FP6 can be found at the website http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/fp6/index_en.htmlUnder this perspective, EURO promoted a number of meetings with theEuropean Commissioner on research, Philippe Busquin, and a number of otherhigh ranking EC officials. The purpose of those meetings was to check thepossibility for EURO, its member societies and the whole OR community, tobenefit from the FP6 and more in general from the R/D policy of the EC.Following these meetings, Euro prepared a "memorandum" which explains whatEURO can do within the FP6 and this is now being distributed. I have receivedthe memorandum and if any EWG-DSS members are interested to create sucha program or project, I can send it. More information about it can be found on:http://www.cordis.lu/fp6/eoi-instruments

Hoping that collaborations and co-operations among all of us will befruitful, I send to all of you my best regards.

Yours Sincerely, Pascale Zaraté

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Recent PublicationA special issue will appear

very soon in the European Journalof Operational Research (EJOR)edited by Rita Ribeiro, AntonioRodriguez and Pascale Zaraté.This special issue will publish aselection of papers presentedduring the 11th EWG-DSS meeting(June 2000) in Toulouse, and the12th EWG-DSS meeting (June2001) in Cascais.

The papers present severalaspects and themes of DSS andinclude the following publications:

Editorial by Rita Ribeiro,Antonio Rodriguez and PascaleZaraté.

Towards using computationalmethods for real-time negotiationsin electronic commerce byGeorgios P. Papamichail andDimitros P. Papamichail.

Data mining for decisionsupport on customer insolvency intelecommunications business by S.Daskalaki, I. Kopanas, M. Goudaraand N. Avouris.

Reinforcing Decision Aid byCapitalizing on Company’sKnowledge: Future Prospects byMichel Gründstein, CamilleRosenthal Sabroux and AlexandrePaculski.

Software Evaluation ProblemSituations by Ioannis Stamelos andAlexis Tsoukias.

The AGAP System : A GDSSfor project analysis and evaluationby Joao P. Costa , Paulo Melo ,Pedro Godinho and Luis Dias.

A fuzzy multiple objectivedecision support model for energyeconomy planning by Ana RosaBorges and Carlos HenggelerAntunes.

Fuzzy MADM: An outrankingmethod by T. Aouam, S.I. Changand E.S. Lee.

Aggregation with generalizedmixture operators using weightfunctions by Rita Almeida Ribeiroand Ricardo Alberto MarquesPereira.

SINGRAR – A fuzzydistributed expert system to assistcommand and control activities in

naval environment by M. SimoesMarques and F.J. Pires.

Simulation of the EuropeanCentral Bank decisions andforecast of short term Euro rateswith an adaptive fuzzy expertsystem by Lorenzo Rizzi, FlavioBazzana, Nikola Kasabov, MarioFedrizzi and Luca Erzegovesi.

Consistency Stability Intervalsfor a Judgement in AHP DSS byJuan Aguaron, Maria TeresaEscobar and Jose Maria MorenoJimenez.♦

Perspectives

Reflections on aspects needingmore attention in thedevelopment of DSSsby Fátima Dargam

By checking the workpresented in the 12th. Mini EUROConference as well as fromreading recent publicationsconcerning development of specificDecision Support Systems, we canobserve that most of the workingeffort has been concentrated onthe investigation of approaches tohandle different problems indecision making, like co-operation,communication, consensus andnegotiation, within amethodological level.

In some cases, prototypeshave been modelled in a pre-customized way, using general-purpose programming languagesand demanding a very longdevelopment time. In fewer casesavailable DSS tools and /orspreadsheet packages were used.Some work representedmathematical models in the systemwithout any transparency. That is,without catering for the fact that thetargeted interested community –most of the times the real decisionmakers – do not want to havestructures of matrices or trees astheir interactive means ofintroducing or updating data/valuesin the system.

From the observationsabove, I believe we can take twomain starting points as the basisfor improvements when developinga DSS.

(1) We should take morecare about providing better (easierto handle) user interfaces forDSSs. By doing so, we mayconsiderably help the decision-makers to understand and use thesystem in a more effective way.

(2) We should dedicatemore working effort to selectingappropriate software tools for theimplementation of a specific DSS,so that the representation model ofits decision making scenario canbe coded without compromisingtoo much its abstraction level. Andthat the overall implementationtime of the system remainsaffordable.

In keeping with the secondpoint above, we can place the workof Alexandre Gachet, whoproposes an up-to-date softwareframework for supporting thedevelopment of specific DSSs (seethe Research Review section ofthis Newsletter).

The reflections describedhere about the points that are stillmissing – or that need moreattention on the development ofDSSs can be considered as “foodfor thought”. They may serve as abuilding block for an open debateon how to improve DSSdevelopment in general. How theother members of the EWG-DSSwill respond to them? Well, this Ido not yet know. But, I am sure wewill hear about it soon through ourmailing list. ♦

Research Review

In this section we present theon-going work of AlexandreGachet. The author is a PhDcandidate in the Department ofComputer Science of the Universityof Fribourg in Switzerland.

His work emphasizes theneed of a new component modelwithin the available DSSdevelopment tools, in order to buildspecific Decision Support Systems.He revisits the classification of DSSdevelopment tools proposed bySprague in the 80’s. By updatingSprague’s original view in face ofthe currently available DSS toolsand DSS generators, he proposesa software framework for

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developing DSS, which is meant tosupport both high and low levelrequirements (like decentralizeddistributed architecture, mobility,cooperation among users, etc.). Itemploys high level of codereusability which lowersconsiderably the development timeof the system.

Below you find the abstract ofhis paper presented at the 12th.Mini EURO Conference, inBrussels.

“Software Frameworks forDeveloping DSSs – A NewComponent in the Classificationof DSS Development Tools”by Alexandre Gachet<alexandre.gachet@unifr.ch>

Abstract: Despite a dramaticevolution in technology during thelast twenty years, Sprague’sFramework for Development ofDecision Support Systems(introduced in 1980) has remainedunchanged until today and stilloffers a strong basis on whichmany current DSSs rely. However,the interpretation of this frameworkby the DSS community evolved asyears went by, bringing theclassification in line with currenttechnological improvements,thereby blurring the boundariesbetween its various components.This paper analyses this evolutionand shows that the currentinterpretation of Sprague’sframework breaks the naturalbalance of the original framework.Then, it proposes the inclusion of anew component in order to roundoff the spectrum of decision-making situations that require thedevelopment of Specific DSSs.

Keywords: Sprague’sFramework, Software Frameworks,DSS Tools, DSS Generators,Specific DSS.♦

EWG-DSS MeetingsAs agreed in an informal

meeting of the EWG-DSS duringthe 12th Mini EURO Conference inBrussels last April, the nextmeetings of the EURO workinggroup on Decision SupportSystems will possibly take place asfollows. The organization of thefollowing meetings is not yet fixedand may still be changed.

EWG-DSS Meeting 2003

The group meeting in 2003 isproposed to happen in conjunctionwith the 14thMini Euro ConferenceHCP2003, dedicated to DistributedDecision Making and Man Machinecooperation. This conference willbe organised by R. Bisdorff and willbe held from 4th to 7th May 2003 inLuxembourg. Contributions for thisconference must be presented onan extended abstract (5 pages)format. Contributions presentedduring this conference could bepublished in EJOR or Incognitojournals.

Four Euro Working Groupstake part in the organization of thisconference, namely: EWG – DSS ;EWG – MCDA ; EWG – Ethics andE-SIGMA.

Half of a day, during theconference time, will be dedicatedto a symposium organised by eachgroup.

A possible meeting with theIFIP group 8.3 on DSS is underdiscussion and the decision will bemade during the Cork conference.

EWG-DSS Meeting 2004

The EWG-DSS 2004 meetingis proposed to happen in a joinedconference with the IFIP group 8.3.The place and the dates are notdefinitively defined yet. Moredetails about it will be available tothe group members in future issuesof the EWG-DSS Newsletter.

We expect that a significantnumber of members of the DSSworking group can participate inour next meetings, so that furthercollaboration among members andexchanging of ideas can bepromoted on a larger scale. ♦

Upcoming Events

July 2002

DSIAge2002 – InternationalConference on Decision Makingand Decision Support in theInternet Age.

This conference is organizedby the IFIP TC8/WG 8.3 and willtake place in Cork, Ireland, duringthe period of 3th to 7th of July 2002.

For more information consultthe web site of the conference:http://afis.ucc.ie/DSIAge2002.

July 2002

IFORS 16-th TriennialConference Edinburgh, UK, FromJuly 8th to 12th, 2002. Hosted by theOperational Research Society.

For more information consultthe web site of the conference.

May 2003

14th Mini Euro Conference –HCP2003 – Conference on HumanCentered Processes: DistributedDecision Making and Man-MachineCooperation.

This conference will takeplace in Luxembourg, during 5th to7th of May 2003.

For more information consultthe web site of the conference:http://www.cu.lu/hcp2003.♦

Contributing to this NewsletterEvery member of the EWG-DSS isvery welcome to contribute to thisNewsletter.

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-DSSNewsletter should be sent to one ofthe email addresses below with thesubject: “EWG-DSS Newsletter”.F.Dargam@SimTechnology.comZarate@irit.fr

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EWG-DSS Members

Since the foundation of theDecision Support System WorkingGroup, in 1989, by the occasion ofthe 6th. EURO Summer School inMadeira, the number of registeredmembers has increased from 25up to 77.

The updated list of membersis available upon request toPascale Zaraté. Changes to this listshould be reported to PascaleZaraté.♦

Contacting the EWG-DSS

The EURO-WG on DecisionSupport Systems is currentlyhead by Pascale Zaraté, who isalso in charge of organizing andupdating the web site and themailing list.

EWG-DSSAtt.:Pascale ZarateIRIT – Equipe CSCINPT – ENSIACET – GI118 route de Narbonne31062 Toulouse cedex 4FRANCE

E-mail: zarate@irit.fr

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

Mailing List: dss@irit.fr

Joining the EWG-DSS

If you wish to join the EURO-Working Group on DecisionSupport Systems, please send ane-mail to zarate@irit.fr, with thefollowing information:

Name: _____________________

Affiliation:___________________

Mailing Address: _____________

Phone: _____________________

Fax:: ______________________

E-mail: _____________________

Home Page: ________________