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Technical - Decision Support

Lead partner: Strathclyde University (Alex Duffy)

Contributing partners: Loughborough University (Paul Chung), Bath University (Peter Johnson), Cambridge University (John Clarkson)

Decision makers need decision support tools to empower them to make better decisions, and to exploit the new TLSM and Architectural concepts developed for NEC from NECTISE project. Good decision support tools can also provide maximum capability at minimum cost given fixed resource availability. The Decision Support (DS) topic undertakes the fundamental and applied research necessary to develop a Virtual Integration Platform for Decision Support (VIP-DS) from an organisational perspective and focuses on how to deliver the processes and products to meet NEC capability requirements in the most effective way.

VIP-DS

As the software deliverable from DS topic, the VIP-DS is, in nature, an integrated decision support environment rather than a traditional decision support system (with fixed functions for specific decisions). It means that the VIP-DS allows reusable decision tools and components (existing or new developments) readily to “plug-in and play” for organisational decision making. In other words, the VIP-DS can provide reconfigurable functionality to respond to rapidly changing business environment. The VIP-DS has two major parts. One is the VIP, i.e. the virtual integration platform. The other is the DS part. The key functions of the VIP include:

1. it provides integration between process, decision tools and decision makers involved in distributed decision making;
2. it provides mechanisms for dynamic configuration and re-configuration of decision tools to “plug-in and play” to support varied decision applications;
3. it promotes information and data integrity across the platform through an information Common Model and Version Management.

The DS part provides decision support through the integration of the developments from four research streams: Capability Components and Architecture, Decision Management, Change Management and Collaborative Working.

Capability Components and Architecture

This stream characterises the capability components used within a decision-making system and the properties of decision-making technologies. It delivers specifications of the properties of the basic components of a decision-making system, within an organisational context and a distributed networked environment. This requires characterisation of state (what is known from TLSM at a given time) prediction (what is known in the future, given current state); actions (the potential decisions) and cost (that captures the consequences of actions). Technologies should be characterised in terms of their computational cost, mode of operation and scaling to enable informed judgements to be made as to their applicability to problems of different scope and scale. A Capability Repository has been developed and a Resource Reasoning engine is to be delivered based on the state-of-the-art ontology technology.

Decision Management

The stream develops a co-ordination framework to enable decision-making components to be recruited, configured and employed within an IDSE and the development of mechanisms that allow network-enabled decisions to be made, by controlling the interaction between decision making system components, and the constraints imposed by the target system and user goals. A particular focus of the decision management function is ensuring constraints of time criticality are met and that account is taken of the multiple levels of interactions between elements of the organisational system within a distributed environment. A Decision Management Engine is to be developed using case-based reasoning.

Change Management

The stream develops techniques to identify critical features and interfaces of target systems susceptible to change. This allows the impact of proposed decisions on the target systems to be assessed more readily and decreases the size of the decision space that must be explored in the decision making process. To do this, existing change prediction processes developed for the automotive and aerospace industries will be extended to allow analysis of hierarchical systems of systems. A Change Prediction and Management tool has been developed which currently provides the capability for users to model systems, to analyse risks of change, and to predict the change propagation path.

Collaborative Working

The stream provides interactive and collaborative tools that are required to address the human aspects of decision support. Research has been undertaken to gain an understanding of how individuals and teams can be supported in decision-making. Models have been developed for team decision analysis. Collaboration tools and technologies are to be developed and applied to allow effective interaction, distribution, communication and coordination of decision-making activities across teams.