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Nr. 10, Year 2011

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

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

New Board Members .................2

EWG-DSS Channels...................3

Interview.....................................3

EWG-DSS Awards .....................5

Recent Publications...................6

EWG-DSS Projects.....................8

Call for Papers ......................... 10

EWG-DSS Meetings ................. 11

Meetings in 2011...................... 11

Upcoming Events..................... 11

Contacting the EWG-DSS ........12

Editorial Board

The Newsletter of the EURO WG on Decision Support Systems is currently edited by: Fátima Dargam, Pascale Zaraté, Rita Ribeiro, Boris Delibašić, Jorge E. Hernández & Shaofeng Liu.

Comments and announcements to next issues of the EWG-DSS Newsletter should be sent to the email address ewg-dss@fccdp.com with the subject: “Newsletter”.

Editorial by Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam, Rita Ribeiro, Boris Delibašić, Jorge Hernández & Shaofeng Liu. (Current Members of the EURO Working Group on DSS Coordination Board)

Dear Euro Working Group Members! Dear Friends!

The year of 2011 has been very positive and productive for our group. Since January 2011, the EWG-DSS Coordination Board has doubled in number of members. Besides the old coordinators (P.Zaraté, F.Dargam and R.Ribeiro), now we count with the assistance of three new Board Members, namely: Boris Delibašić; Jorge Hernández and Shaofeng Liu, to better administrate the activities of the group, as well as to bring new ideas to it. The new members have already proved their value in their first official task within the Board. It was great to count with their non-exhausting support in all the organizational stages of the EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision System, which took place in Birkbeck University of London last June. Great work! Their level of cooperation and support has been outstanding!

Also in 2011, the EWG-DSS has managed to organize two Workshops; to propose a COST Action on the theme “Decision in the Internet Age”, joining over 20 members of the group within a very exciting proposal for a network of excellence in the area; to launch the initiative of the annual “EWG-DSS Award”; and to write a proposal for a EU project, entitled “PIKES: Providing Integrated Knowledge Management and Decision Making Approaches for Resource Efficient Process Simulation and Innovation”, together with 7 members of the group and related industrial partners, addressing the topic of the FP7 Call FoF.NMP.2012-6. As you can see, we kept ourselves busy! All those activities comply with one of the main aims of our group, which is to actively promote the interest on Decision Systems in the scientific community by proposing research projects, organizing dedicated workshops, mini-conferences and conference streams, as well as editing special and contributed issues in relevant scientific journals. In this sense, the EWG-DSS Board is currently editing two Journal Special Issues (on IJDSST and IJIDS) and one LNBIP Series Springer Book, which are described in more details in this issue.

This EWG-DSS Newsletter reports to you the details about all our 2011 activities, projects, publications, proposals and achievements. It also reports about both London and Paris Workshops, the latter is still to happen during the period of November 30th to December 1st, 2011. Another highlight of this edition is the worth reading interview with Prof. João Clímaco! Within the usual sections, this issue presents research projects being developed by members of the group; recent publications; call for papers and for conference participation as well as general information about the group members. We thank you all for your contributions and hope you enjoy our EWG-DSS Nr.10 2011 Newsletter! Best wishes from the EWG-DSS Coordination Board!

Boris Delibašić, Shaofeng Liu, Rita Ribeiro, Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam & Jorge Hernández.

Photo: London, 2011

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New Board Members Boris Delibašić

“Being invited to assist the EWG DSS Board gave me the possibility to work in a dynamic team, to help the coordination of the EWG-DSS group, to know better the DSS community and to participate in the EWG-DSS activities (organization of workshops, co-edition of journals and books, etc). So far, this has been a huge and enlightening experience for me.” Boris Delibašić is an Assistant Professor at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Organizational Sciences. In 2007 he received his PhD with the theme “Formalization of the decision-making process with patterns”. His main research interests are reusable component algorithm design, business intelligence, data-warehouse development, and multi-attribute decision making. He is member of the development team of the open-source data mining platform (www.whibo.fon.bg.ac.rs) WhiBo. Dr. Delibašić is also an adjunct lecturer at the University of Jena (Germany). He is also a Fulbright visiting scholarship holder for the academic year 2011/2012 at Temple University, USA. He joined the Data Analysis and Biomedical Analytics Center at Temple on October 1st, 2011(http://www.dabi.temple.edu), where his research objectives are to design spatio-temporal algorithms for analysis of ski injuries and to discover ski injury patterns that could be used for injury prevention. The algorithms developed for ski injuries will be extended to analyze large scale data on road traffic accidents.

Jorge Hernández

“My opportunity to belong to the EWG-DSS Board can be seen as a huge privilege, since the team is

already conformed by a high-qualified staff who is very open to collaborate and support new ideas. Thereafter, by having this prospect, the team makes me feel very comfortable and supported within their experience. I really expect to reach this high-qualified level to start to contribute side by side within this excellent European working group.” Jorge E. Hernández is Lecturer in Management at the University of Liverpool Management School (UK). He holds an Industrial Engineer degree from Universidad de La Frontera of Chile (2003) which was awarded by the Latin American Association of Industrial Engineering Students and related careers (2003). His PhD VIVA is due for presentation on December 12th of 2012 at the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain). His research considers collaborative decision-making processes using conceptual modelling, simulation and multi-agent based approaches, as well as forecasting and optimization techniques. He is involved in some international projects, such as the FP7 REMPLANET European project, which is concerned with non-hierarchical supply chain networks; the C2I UK project, which deals with the generation of collaborative planning environment in supply chains; and the REVOLUTION Spanish project, which is concerned with the transport modelling and optimisation process at a Valencian automotive supply chain network. The work of Mr. Hernández can be found in several competitive international journals, book chapters and conferences. He is also a reviewer for international journals and conferences.

Shaofeng Liu

“It has been for me a great experience as a new member working on the EWG-DSS Co-ordination Board over the last year or so. For me, it is a great honour to be invited to join the Board. I also take great pleasure in putting my service to such a wonderful scientific community. Working on the Board, I have had the privilege to get to know a wonderful collection of academics, practitioners and researchers in the DSS area and beyond. Engaging with them not only opens my eyes and minds, it also helps me understand better of the community’s needs and

requirements for the benefit of future service. In the organisation of the EWG-DSS 2011 London Workshop, the support I have received from the EWG-DSS members and friends, including those internationally famous scholars, was tremendous, which I highly appreciate. Among which I have to take this opportunity to express my special gratitude to Professor Philip Powell (the Executive Dean and Professor of Management, School of Business, Economics and Informatics, at Birkbeck, University of London) for all the help I have received from him for the local organisation of the EWG-DSS London Workshop! Working alongside our experienced Board members, Pascale, Fatima and Rita, has been a delight. I have observed with my own eyes and known how hard they have worked for the community without payments or complaints but sweats and long hours. They have set up excellent examples for me to follow during my service to the EWG-DSS. I have also learnt from them first-hand about professionalism and work efficiency, which I take as a priceless reward to my involvement with the Coordination Board. Therefore, huge thanks to Pascale, Fatima and Rita! Finally, thanks to all of the EWG-DSS members for putting up with me and look forward to seeing you again soon in Paris!” Shaofeng Liu is an Associate Professor (Reader in UK system) in Operations Management and Decision Making at the School of Management in University of Plymouth. She obtained a PhD in knowledge and information models for production management in the context of global manufacturing from Loughborough University, UK. She has undertaken research for a number of collaborative projects funded by EC and UK research councils. Some of the recent projects included EU FP6 project “VIRTUE: The Virtual Tank Utility in Europe”, EU FP6 project “SAFDOR: Design, Operation and Regulation for Safety”, and UK EPSRC and BAE Systems jointly funded project “NECTISE: Network Enabled Capability Through Integrated Systems Engineering”. Her currently research is mainly in the area of knowledge-based approaches and tools for resource-efficient production management decisions, including project “Quality assurance for embedded knowledge systems in agile manufacturing environment”. Dr. Liu has published over 50 refereed papers on high quality international journals and conferences.

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EWG-DSS Channels Below you find a description

of all the available communication channels for you to get in touch with the EWG-DSS group and its over 150 registered members.

“Efficient communication helps you to better cooperate, innovate, add and multiply!”

EWG-DSS Mailing-List:

ewg-dss@irit.fr This mailing-list is devoted to the registered EWG-DSS members to spread within the group information about research events, projects, calls for publications, etc.

EWG-DSS Web-Links:

EWG-DSS – Blog

http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/ The EWG-DSS blog is maintained by the Coordination Board. There you find up-to-date information about the group’s activities, as projects, research collaborations, workshops and publications.

EWG-DSS – EURO Homepage http://www.euro-online.org/web/ewg/10/ewg-decision-support-systems The EWG-DSS page at the EURO site is the group’s official homepage. There you find a summary of the detailed information you find in the blog. It is worth visiting the EURO page also to get to know what other EWGs are promoting and also about the EURO K Conferences, Awards, Summer Institutes and other OR related events and publications.

EWG-DSS – IRIT Server

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

The EWG-DSS Server is hosted at IRIT. It contains all the EWG-DSS shared files. Via the option “Review Members”, one is able to

check the e-mail addresses of each member. To access the server you need to be a registered member of the group.

EWG-DSS – LinkedIn Group

LinkedIn Groups

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

The Linked-In EWG-DSS Group has currently 100 members. This group is also open to Linked-In users, who wish to interact with our group without being a registered EWG-DSS member. There you find briefings of the group’s activities, discussions, job announcements, CfP, etc. If you like networking, you should take advantage of this fantastic plataform! To read and interact with the Linked-In EWG-DSS Group, you have to log in the Linked-In network.

EWG-DSS – Slideshare Account

http://www.slideshare.net/ewgdss

This EWG-DSS account is open to any visitor of Slideshare. There you find all the digital versions of previous Newsletters, as well as the online EWG-DSS presentations. If you wish to share some of your research presentations with us, you are welcome to use this account.

Interview

João Clímaco

“I am an engineer, an operational researcher, who discovered the potentialities of MCDA and DSS just by chance!”

This year the coordinators of the EWG-DSS had the pleasure to interview our long-time colleague: João Clímaco, who was also a founding member of the EWG-

DSS since 1989 in Madeira. Clímaco took part in the EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems and we had the chance to contact him for this interview. Among various subjects, we talked about Clímaco’s academic career as Professor of the Faculty of Economics in the Coimbra University and of the INESC Coimbra (Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores de Coimbra). The result of this pleasant meeting is reported to you here.

We congratulate Prof. João Clímaco for all his many important career achievements and we also thank him for giving us the opportunity of producing this exciting interview for the 10th edition of the EWG-DSS Newsletter in 2011.

We hope you enjoy reading it! EWG-DSS: When and why was your interest on DSS born? JC: In fact, in the late 70’s of the 20th Century I got a Master in Control Systems at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, London. My thesis was on a particular theoretical subject related to duality in non-linear programming, and just by chance I was introduced at that time to the new ideas of multi-objective mathematical programming, enabling a fruitful cross-fertilization of both areas. Later, working in my Ph.D. thesis on Power Systems Expansion Planning, I developed a multiobjective linear programming model (MOLP), considering explicitly three criteria: cost, reliability and environmental impact. To solve the problem I implemented a new generating algorithm proposed by Milan Zeleny in his Ph.D. thesis in the early 70’s. However, I was not very pleased with the results, because it was heavy in computational terms and the outcome was several hundreds of vertices of the feasible polyhedron (the so-called non-dominated vertices). Of course, it was not very adequate to present the Decision Makers such a large number of alternatives, leaving for them the final choice… By that

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time I read some articles by R. Ackoff emphasizing the weaknesses of Operations Research in practice. Those articles drew my attention to the importance of building new flexible interactive approaches. Then, I started by the implementation of the classical interactive MOLP approaches and in short we concluded that, at least in some type of models as in our Power System Planning Model, the use of approaches based on the assumption of convergence to some best compromise solution was not very appealing… So, in the late 80’s, we developed a triobjective learning oriented computational environment, looking for a progressive and selective learning of the potentially interesting non-dominated solutions. The outcome was TRIMAP, which is in fact a DSS that makes use of graphical and numerical information, integrating objective and subjective aspects involved in the selection of satisfactory compromise solutions (Clímaco and Antunes, in Mathematical and Computer Modelling 1989). Summarizing, this real life story is the origin of my interest in DSS.

Contributing to this Newsletter

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

Subjects can be related to:

Project Descriptions

Recent Publications

PhD Dissertations

Book Presentations / Reviews

Research Group Presentations

Research Views and Perspectives

Journal Announcements – CfP

Forthcoming Events

General Announcements

Contributions should be sent to the email address ewg-dss@fccdp.com with the subject: “Newsletter”.

In those early days the DSS architectures proposed by Tawfic Jelassi and the new ideas of Albert Anghern were very inspiring to me. In the book Bridging the Socio-Technical Gap in Decision Support Systems, IOS Press 2010 (Proceedings of DSS 2010, Lisboa 7-10, July, 2010) you can see applications and the references concerning the original papers, related to two DSS we have been developing. EWG-DSS: The very fast development of communication and information technologies and the necessity of improving OR tools were two key issues in the development of DSS. Regarding your own experience, how remarkable are the achievements of the last 30 years? JC: DSS roots are much diversified. Clearly, they have been developed following several streams of research. As I said before, I am an engineer, an operational researcher, who discovered the potentialities of MCDA and DSS just by chance! So, I see DSS from the point of view of an MCDA convict researcher and supporter… I have not a complete transversal knowledge on DSS. Made this declaration of interests, let me answer your question. In the year 2000 I was chosen to make the inaugural lecture of the academic year at the University of Coimbra. The title of my talk was: “A Critical Reflection on Optimal Decision” (a short version can be found in EJOR 2004). In the last part of that talk, in some sense I answered your question. In short I said: “Conceptually, decision aiding science, permits or even incorporates, both quantitative and qualitative models in assisting agents of decision, with large spectrum of options, from the traditional models of Optimization, to Statistical Inference, to the techniques of Artificial Intelligence, to Cognitive Maps, imported from Psychology, and used with considerable success in the structuring of decision problems, etc, etc…” In recent years, multicriteria models, group decision and negotiation models

have undergone great development and, in many cases, they are models rooted in constructivism. Obviously, they tackle questions that are very relevant in many decision processes. In particular, we can not forget that negotiation is present in many real world cases, yet it was ignored by OR for decades. The use of multicriteria models lets us avoid one of the essential issues that have followed us throughout, that issue being a priori aggregation of the preferences of decision agents in a single criterion, reducing everything to just one measure, usually applied in monetary units. Some multicriteria approaches propose the combination of algorithmic protocols with the experience and intuition of the decision agents in the process of preference aggregation. But, even if only formalized procedures are used to aggregate preferences, these are generally interactive, and need not be compensatory. Obviously, aggregation always implies loss of information, which means special care is needed. New technologies allow very flexible interactive DSS to be constructed, which makes it easier to put a constructivist view of operational research in practice. In addition, these DSS can even be used symbiotically with wider-ranging tools of a systemic nature, or with qualitative prospective analysis. Crosier, in B. Roy (ed.), La Décision – ses Disciplines et ses Acteurs (1983), recognizes that OR is established as a particular case of action methodology, and we add that constructivist approach is blurring the borders between various levels of this methodology. Although I am optimistic about the future of DSS in practice, we must admit that open DSSs, which can integrate quantitative and qualitative models, and perhaps the actors’ experience and intuition about the decision process, have not yet been found to be very useful in practical complex problems. EWG-DSS: We live nowadays a deep economical and social crisis. In your opinion, how can DSS help to overcome our current situation?

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JC: Although I still make research on the development of new multicriteria tools and their engineering applications, I have new research interests, which may have been stimulated by my move to the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra. I believe that speaking a few words about the most recent of those experiences will justify what I think about your difficult question. I am speaking about potential interest of some multicriteria analysis concepts in order to try to increase the usefulness of the “Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress”. A Commission on this subject was created in 2008 by Stiglitz, Sen and Ftoussi (SSF) with the patronage of President Sarkozi. As it is written in the introduction of their report: “The Commission’s aim has been to identify the limits of GDP as an indicator of economic performance and social progress including the problems with its measurement; to consider what additional information might be required for the production of more relevant indicators of social progress to assess the feasibility of alternative measurement tools and discuss how to present the statistical information in an appropriate way”. Of course, there are several propositions of new indices in the literature and in the Internet. However the SSF report is much more than a new proposal, it is a space for open discussion on the subject. It proposes to get adequate data enabling multi-methodological enhancements in the definition of well-being, quality of life and sustainability in order to substitute the mono-rationality of GDP by the multi-rationality of a dashboard of indicators (including possible aggregate measures according to different perspectives…). The importance of new concepts is crucial. Among them I draw your attention to capability (proposed by Sen). It is introduced as a “kind of freedom, to achieve alternative functioning combinations (or, less formally, put the freedom to achieve various life styles)”. Note that Sen already considers that total comparisons getting complete rankings can not

be adequate to measure capability and suggests other direct and indirect approaches without rejecting interpersonal information. In conclusion, it is clear the importance of new concepts and new interactive tools in order to help the decision makers to clarify the consequences of feasible choices of very complex challenges in our society, many of them related to the present crisis. Hence, it is unquestionable the need of trans-disciplinary research in this and other senses. The question is: “Are political and other key societal decision makers interested in this type of evolution?” Note that when a problem becomes highly controversial, when it is surrounded by uncertainties and conflicts of values, the preconceived ideas of many decision makers are one of the pieces of a complicated jigsaw. For instance, in Pfeffer Harvard Business School Press (1992), the author observes that, in many of life’s circumstances, the experts perform the service of hired guns for company directors or for politicians, justifying preconceived decisions scientifically… EWG-DSS: We can see how enthusiastic you discourse about your working area and your research interests. To conclude our interview, we would like to know about “What is next?” In other words: What are your plans for the next years? JC: It is very difficult to speak about the future. As a well known Portuguese football player once said: “Previsions, only after the match…”. What I can say is that I plan to continue working at INESC-Coimbra, the research centre I helped to create in mid eighties. I intend to maintain at INESC some collaborations with external researchers in Portugal and abroad, as well as to carry on with the supervision of PhD theses. At this moment I am starting a very interesting collaboration with a Group of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, involving decision aiding for sustainable development and new ways to deal with performance measures in several

contexts. I emphasize this new project because it tries to contribute modestly, with new proposals, to overcome bad practices supporting the present decisions, which are - in our opinion - responsible for the deplorable situation of our societies. EWG-DSS: João Clímaco: Thank you very much for this extraordinary opportunity. It’s been a remarkable experience for us to interview you !

EWG-DSS Award

The EWG-DSS has launched this year a motivating research initiative for young researchers of an annual “EWG-DSS-Award“.

The annual “EWG-DSS-Award” will choose the best and most innovative among submitted and presented work by students or young researchers, in the EWG-DSS organized workshops and conference streams of the same year, to be rewarded with a modest prize in money.

How to apply?

To apply for the annual EWG-DSS Award you only need to participate in one of our Workshops or Session Streams organized each year and allow your work to be part of our

selection!

For 2011, applicable work submitted to the EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems in June 2011 and to the EWG-DSS Stream on Collaborative Decision Making of the EWG-DSS / DASIG Paris-2011 Joint-Workshop in November 2011 will be taken into consideration for this award.

The “EWG-DSS-Award 2011″ will be of € 300.00. For the next years, the EWG-DSS hopes to

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count with sponsorship from the industrial sector to make the Award more financially appealing.

We hope you like and support this initiative by participating, sponsoring it and/or disseminating this information among your students, colleagues, research partners and collaborators.

Guidelines an requisites for the work selection, ranking and final choice for the “EWG-DSS Award” will soon be published in the EWG-DSS Blog.

Recent Publications

Journal Announcements: EURO New Journals:

In 2011 the EURO Executive Committee has proposed to launch in collaboration with Springer three new journals volume a year, namely: EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics; EURO Journal on Computational Optimization; EURO Journal on Decision Processes.

Each volume will consist of 4 regular issues. For the EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics and the EURO Journal on Computational Optimization the aim is to publish the first issue in 2012. For the EURO Journal on Decision Processes the first issue will be published in 2013.

The EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics was already officially launched on July 15, 2011 by EURO, the Association of European Operational Research Societies EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics

This journal promotes the

use of mathematics in general, and operations research in particular, in the context of transportation and logistics. It is a forum for the presentation of original mathe-matical models, methodologies and computational results, focussing on advanced applications in transport-tation and logistics. The journal publishes two types of document: (i) research articles and (ii) tutorials. A research article presents original methodological contributions to the field (e.g. new mathematical models, new algorithms, new simulation tech-niques). A tutorial provides an introduction to an advanced topic, designed to ease the use of the relevant methodology by researchers and practitioners. IJDSST - Special Issue on Networking Decision Making and Negotiation

The Special Issue on “Networking Decision Making and Negotiation” of the IJDSST: International Journal of Decision Support System Technology has the objective of gathering papers

devoted to the development of new approaches to decision-making and decision support for negotiation, taking into account collaborative networking environments and the Internet technology. This Special Issue will mainly select papers of the EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems http://londonewgdss2011.wordpress.com/.

Topics to be discussed in

this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

Distributed support systems Collaborative decision making Group support systems Knowledge and resource

discovery and decision making Negotiation support systems Spatial-temporal decision

support systems Web 2.0 systems for decision

support and globalization context.

Guest Editors:

Fátima C.C. Dargam Boris Delibašić Jorge E. Hernández Shaofeng Liu

This IJDSST Special Issue is still in its reviewing process. If you wish to submit a full original paper to it, please contact the guest editors via the email: ewg-dss@fccdp.com. IJIDS - Special Issue on Collaborative Decision Support Systems

This Special Issue on

“Collaborative Decision Support Systems” of the IJIDS:

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International Journal of Information and Decision Sciences has the objective of gathering papers devoted to the following topics:

Distributed / Collaborative

Decision Making Methods, Languages and Tools

to support Decision Making Group support systems &

Negotiation support systems Knowledge Management &

Decision Support Systems Business Intelligence and Data

Warehousing Spatial-temporal Decision

Support Systems Web 2.0 systems for decision

support

This Special Issue mainly selects papers of the EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems: http://londonewgdss2011.wordpress.com/. Guest Editors:

Jason Papathanasiou Shaofeng Liu Pascale Zaraté

This IJIDS Special Issue is still in its reviewing process. If you wish to submit a full original paper to it, please contact the guest editors via the email: ewg-dss@fccdp.com. EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems – Book of Abstracts

This Book of Abstracts is available online as pdf file under the link:

http://londonewgdss2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/ewg-dss-london-2011-digital-proceedings-new.pdf . EWG-DSS / DASIG Paris-2011 Joint-Workshop - EWG-DSS Stream on Collaborative Decision Making – Book of Abstracts

This Book of Abstracts is available online as pdf file under the link: http://ewgdssparis2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/ewg-dss-dasig-workshop-proceedings-online-version.pdf . LNBIP – Springer Book on Collaborations in Real Environments

This Book of Post-Proceedings of the Springer Series LNBIP – Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, consists mainly of revised and extended final papers selected from the “EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop” and from the “EWG-DSS Paris-2011 Workshop” in

Nov. 30th- Dec. 1st, 2011. It aims at collecting high quality papers, which cover academics, practitioners and enterprises’ points of views, as well as real problems and issues from the implementation of collaborative perspectives in different kinds of environments. Hence, subjects as: Distributed Group Support Systems, Collaborative Decision Making, Supply Chain Management, Information Technologies and Simulation to support real collaborative environments are particularly welcome. In addition, real applications are highly expected. Guest Editors:

Jorge E. Hernández Pascale Zaraté Fátima C.C. Dargam Boris Delibašić Shaofeng Liu Rita Ribeiro

Call for Papers: http://londonewgdss2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/20110517_ewg-dss_cfp_springer_vjeh.pdf This LNBIP Book is still in its editorial process. If you wish to submit a full original paper to it, please contact the guest editors via the email: ewg-dss@fccdp.com. Publications from members of the EWG-DSS: Delibašić B, Jovanovic M, Vukicevic M, Suknovic M, Obradovic Z (2011) Component-based decision trees for classification, Intelligent Data Analysis 15(5), 671-693, http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/IDA-2011-0489 Hernández, J.E., Mula, J., Poler, R., Pavón, J (2011). A multiagent negotiation based model to support the collaborative supply chain planning process. Studies in Informatics and Control vol 20 issue 1 pp 43-54. Hernández, J.E., Poler, R., Mula, J., Lario, F.C. (2011). The reverse logistic process of an automobile supply chain network supported by a collaborative decision-making model. Group Decision and Negotiation vol 20 issue 1 pp 79-114.

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Shaofeng Liu, Bob Young and Lian Ding, 2011.A decision support system for global manufacturing co-ordination in the automotive industry. International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing 24(4): 285-301. Shaofeng Liu, Mike Leat and Melanie Hudson Smith, 2011.State-of-the-art sustainability analysis methodologies for efficient decision support in green production operations. International Journal of Sustainable Engineering 4(3): 236-250. Suknovic M, Delibasic B, Jovanovic M, Vukicevic M, Becejski-Vujaklija D, Obradovic Z, 2011, Reusable Components in Decision Tree Induction Algorithms, Computational Statistics. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00180-011-0242-8 Thanks to all group members who contributed to this section.

EWG-DSS Projects DITIA - Decisions in the Internet Age

Action COST Proposal

by Fátima Dargam, Pascale Zaraté & Rita Ribeiro

This Action proposal supports a forum of excellence among Decision Science researchers to guide advanced research in the field of Decision Systems, currently developed by nationally-funded institutions of European COST member countries and worldwide, towards an innovative distributed interoperable Decision Systems paradigm for the Internet Age. This paradigm will deliver solutions for web-based decision-making by promoting the appropriate interaction of three key components: the ever-growing availability and changeability of data; the growing complexity and uncertainty of decision environments; as well as ubiquitous high-speed information flow. This way, it supports spatial-temporal decisions including collaborative decision-making.

This Action’s main mission is to facilitate via the established network, highly qualified joint-research among its collaborators and promote the necessary process of technology transfer from Decision Sciences to industry.

The main objective of this Action is to establish a network and support a forum of excellence among Decision Sciences researchers to guide advanced research towards an innovative distributed interoperable paradigm for Decision Systems for the Internet. As a benefit, DITIA Action will facilitate and promote research towards the specification of an innovative web-based collaborative decision-making paradigm. This benefit adds value to the area of Information Technology by complementing efforts of other networks, like Agreement Technologies; whereas it also adds value to the European ICT industry by presenting a new DSS framework for the Web 2.0/3.0 technologies to be considered for technology transfer and further development within an open source distributed software basis. Another expected benefit that can be identified is the dissemination of interdisciplinary competences through qualified cross-joint-research production and continuing education, involving young researchers for sustained capacity building, within the existing European community of Decision Sciences and Technologies.

The DITIA network counts with over 20 interested European participants. Most of them come from two existing working groups: the EURO Working on Decision Support Systems – EWG-DSS and the IFIP TC8/WG8.3 group on DSS. Those DSS working groups will provide DITIA with a consolidated background on their expertise areas. Thus, complementing this COST Action to successfully promote an augmented network within European countries and worldwide to tackle the open and missing issues within Decision-Making in the Internet Age.

The DITIA Action COST proposal is under its preliminary evaluation period. If it succeeds, then a final detailed Action proposal will have to be prepared up to January 2012. You can read more about the DITIA proposal in the EWG-DSS Blog.

EWG-DSS Social-Academic Network

How do we proceed? by Fátima Dargam, Pascale Zaraté & Rita Ribeiro

In the EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems, we presented the current status of this project, with the abstract entitled: “The EWG-DSS Social-Academic Network: How do we proceed?”.

We discussed about its open issues in order to motivate some members of the group to collaborate with its further development.

This work analyses the social network, created for the EWG-DSS to represent the various academic relationships that link its members. This study shows how the group’s collaboration dynamics has evolved since its foundation: a period of over 20 years.

The project now requests the participation and collaboration of the members of the EWG-DSS to update its database of publications for its next version. At the current stage, the project’s network analysis needs to be optmized to better explain the concluding factors about the group, so that

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easy checking of cooperation can be performed. This will help to promote further collaboration among the academic members of the group in common projects and joint-publications.

We hope that some other researchers of the EWG-DSS group get interested in joining us in the implementation of the new version of our Social-Academic Network and we already thank you all in advance for your support in sending us links to your updated publications data!

PIKES: Providing Integrated Knowledge Management and Decision Making Approaches for Resource Efficient Process Simulation and Innovation EU FP7 FoF.NMP.2012-6 Proposal

by Univ.of Plymouth; Univ. of Liverpool; Univ. of Toulouse; Univ. of Macedonia; UNINOVA; Univ. of

Belgrade; EADS; SimTech; AMF Engineering; INOVAX; Emerson Control Tech. & Advisory Board: MAS; Stenum.

The PIKES project proposal has been initiated in response to the “Factories of the Future” work programme, answering the call for a collaborative project on: Knowledge-based tools and approaches for process planning and integrated process simulation at factory level (FoF.NMP.2012-6).

The overall goal of PIKES is to develop an integrated knowledge-based decision support platform that assembles advanced process, resource, simulation methods and decision support technologies to tackle the process optimisation and innovation issue in the emerging resource efficient manufacturing. It will equip factory shop floor practitioners with a comprehensive approach and holistic tool with a view to substantially enhancing all aspects of the current process innovation decision making, which to a large extent is based on production engineers and managers’ intuition and experience.

Through targeting at delivering “the knowledge-based process decision platform”, PIKES addresses a number of strategic objectives relevant to the European Manufacturing industry as well reflected in the sustainable development campaign. The proposed research aims at in particular:

Increasing the competitiveness of the European manufacturing industry through an enhanced system of process resource efficiency analysis and optimisation. Resource energy efficiency analysis is expected to be more precise through macro- and micro-level process-resource mapping. Decision maker’s judgement on process optimisation and innovation will be improved when underpinned by a well-developed dedicated knowledge base, a collaborative approach and multi-criteria decision analysis. Lean process simulation will reduce potential risks of resource-oriented process innovation and total production cost. The integrated knowledge-based process decision platform is expected to improve process-resource performance in terms of energy consumption by as much as 20% (indicated by pilot study from previous projects). This figure may appear small; there will be a significant contribution to European wide energy savings given the total numbers of manufacturing companies, not to mention the considerable cost savings to the process owners. The project provides a whole new perspective on process optimisation and innovation (traditionally resource energy efficiency was not a criterion in process decision making).

Contributing to advanced technological developments and integration of disparate production management and ICT support for decision making activities aiming for facilitating the use of innovative process techniques and methods.

Promoting a truly European collaboration which is expected to have a structuring and integrating effect.

Strengthening the role of SMEs through this collaboration scenario, addressing an area of forefront technological development in manufacturing process optimisation and innovation, as a means to gaining and sustaining European manufacturing industry’s competitiveness and leadership. This effect is particularly prominent in the proposal as PIKES partners include a group of SMEs, leading manufacturers and consultants, supplying services to other major players in the field of machinery, electronics and aerospace manufacturing/maintenance.

Resource efficiency performance of processes is becoming the decisive factor for economic growth, environmental friendliness and employee’s well-being in manufacturing. Analysis and optimisation of process performance or behaviour of decision making is often a lengthy time-consuming task, rarely supported by modern knowledge-based computational techniques. This element which is prominent in the process innovation is a limiting factor for the overall performance of the manufacturing industry. In parallel the planned work on improved risk analysis will influence production costs mainly by providing reliable evaluation through the lean process simulation. Thus, PIKES will have direct as well as indirect – via reducing resource waste to become greener manufacturers – influences on the products and production costs of the European manufacturing industry. As the proposal also addresses a variety of operational issues, the European manufacturing industry will equally benefit from the results.

The PIKES project proposal is under its final preparation and will be submitted by Dec.1st, 2011 to the EU Program Call FP7 FoF.NMP.2012-6. If it succeeds, PIKES will be a collaboration project of 3 years, starting in October 2012, involving the partners: Univ.of Plymouth; Univ. of Liverpool; Univ. of Toulouse; Univ. of Macedonia; UNINOVA; Univ. of Belgrade; EADS; SimTech; AMF Engineering; INOVAX; Emerson Control Tech. & Advisory Board: MAS; Stenum. For further information

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about this project, please contact the EWG-DSS Board via the email address: ewg-dss@fccdp.com.

Call for Papers

EURO XXV, Vilnius, Lithuania. July 8-11th, 2012. The 25th European Conference on Operational Research "EURO XXV", with the special subject "OR - Connecting Sciences" will take place in Vilnius, organized by the Lithuanian OR Society, during the period of July 8th-11th, 2012. More information about it can be found the Conference Homepage: www.euro-2012.lt. DSS Stream

As usual, the EWG-DSS Coordination Board, under the representation of F. Dargam; R. Ribeiro and P. Zaraté, will organize in this Conference a Decision Support Systems Stream, to which you are all welcome to participate and submit your research work.

The DSS Stream at EURO XXV is composed of four sessions:

- DSS Session 1 (code: ea286cb6): Group Support Systems / Distributed / Collaborative Decision Making

- DSS Session 2 (code: b22bd4a2): Web-based Spatial-temporal Decision Support Systems

- DSS Session 3 (code: c3be9e37): Knowledge Management & Decision Systems

- DSS Session 4 (code: 16ca0674): Applications in Decision Making & Decision Analysis

In order to submit your abstract to one of those sessions, you need to login in the conference site, select the “Abstract submission” menu option and then enter the session code (see above) to which you wish to place your submission. Contributors are requested to submit their Abstracts (no more than 600 characters) in English. The Call for Papers for the EURO XXV – DSS Stream can be downloaded via the link: http://ewgdss.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cfp-euro-xxv-vilnius2012-dss-stream.pdf

Important Dates

Dealines for Abstracts: March 1st, 2012 Acceptance notification

March 31st, 2012

Deadline for early registration

April 1st, 2012 Deadline for

author registration May1st, 2012

EURO XXV Conference dates

July 8th-11th, 2012 In order to ease the

organisation of the DSS Stream sessions, please keep us informed about your contributions to the DSS Stream, by sending a copy of your submitted papers to ewg-dss@fccdp.com. Thanks!

EDDA 2012 The EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award

The EDDA (EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award) is a EURO instrument. It consists of a prize that is awarded at each EURO-K conference. The purpose of the prize is to distinguish an outstanding PhD thesis in Operational Research defended in the countries having an OR society that is member of EURO.

The EDDA 2012 will be awarded for the sixth time at the closing session of the EURO-2012 conference (Vilnius, July 8 - 11, 2012). The EDDA 2012 jury will only consider PhD theses in Operational Research defended between 15 January 2010 (i.e., the deadline for the preceding edition of the prize) and 15 January 2012 (the deadline for the present edition). The dissertation should have been defended in a University located in a member country of EURO. The author of

the dissertation should be a member of a member society of EURO. The prize consists in an ad hoc certificate and reward of €1000,00. The three finalists will have to register for the EURO 2012 conference (they will only pay the early registration fees). EURO will contribute, if necessary, to their travel and journey expenses. Further details about the EDDA-2012 are available at the EURO XXV Homepage: http://www.euro-2012.lt/awards. General information about this award can be found at the EURO Homepage: http://www.euro-online.org/web/pages/242/guidelines .

DSS2012: The 16th IFIP WG8.3 International Conference on Decision Support Systems.

Anávissos, Greece, June 28-30th, 2012. Conference Special theme: "Fusing DSS into the Fabric of the Context”

The aim of the IFIP Working Group 8.3 DSS’2012 open conference is to explore the modern perspective of the fusion view on information systems identity and the implications of this view for decision support systems.

The conference solicits papers that describe the application of fusion principles on decision support systems research and practice. It is timely to explore the socio-technical approaches for fusing decision support, as well as opportunities and obstacles for achieving a total fusion of DSS systems in various contexts. Submissions from academics and practitioners are invited. Papers describing real case studies will be most welcomed. All submitted manuscripts will be double blind peer-reviewed in full by at least two reviewers and members of the Program Committee. The acceptance of the contributions will be based on the originality of the

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work, the relevance for the conference theme and overall quality.

The Call for Papers for this conference can be found in the hompepage.(http://www.psych.lse.ac.uk/ifip-dss/page1/styled/index.html) and also in the DSS2012 Homepage at: http://www.lml.lse.ac.uk/DSS2012/. DSS-2012 Paper submission opens on 1 December 2011.

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

. Fontainebleau (France) – 1990;

. Bruges (Belgium) – 1991;

. Nagycenk (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;

. London (UK) – 2011;

. Paris (France) – 2011.

Meetings in 2011 In 2011, the EWG-DSS had

the great opportunity to organize two Workshops, which allowed the group to have two official annual meetings!

The EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems

The first meeting of the EWG-DSS in 2011 took place in

London, within the EWG-DSS London-2011 Workshop on Decision Systems. It was organized in cooperation with Philip Powell, Executive Dean and Professor of Management in the School of Business, Economics and Informatics at Birkbeck Univ. of London, where the EWG-DSS Workshop took place. We are deeply grateful to the support received from Philip Powell and his team in the London Workshop.

We can certainly say that the

London-2011 Workshop was a great success! There were 45 registered participants and 39 presentations. All presentations were very interesting and there was a high level of information exchange for further cooperation among the participants. Complete details about the Workshop Program and its Special Talks can be found at its Homepage: http://londonewgdss2011.wordpress.com/.

The digital version of the

Workshop Proceedings can be downloaded via the link: EWG-DSS London-2011 Digital Proceedings.

The Workshop Photos can be

seen and downloaded via the link: http://www.fccdp.com/EWG-DSS%20London-2011/album/index.html. The EWG-DSS / DASIG Paris-2011 Joint-Workshop on Policy Analytics and on Collaborative Decision Making Nov.30 - Dec1, 2011

The EWG-DSS jointly with

the DASIG Decision Analysis Special Interest Group from the British OR Society and CNRS-LAMSADE, in cooperation with Paris Dauphine University, had the pleasure to co-organize the EWG-DSS / DASIG Paris-2011 Joint-Workshop on Policy Analytics and on Collaborative Decision Making on the period of November 30th to December 1st, 2011. We are very grateful to the support received from our colleague and EWG-DSS founding member Alexis Tsoukias from LAMSADE, in organizing this

meeting in Paris Dauphine University.

The EWG-DSS / DASIG

Paris-2011 Joint-Workshop has attracted the participation and the interest of many professionals of the decision-making research area. It presents a total of 23 research contributions, 2 special talks and 1 plenary discussion. The EWG-DSS Stream on “Collaborative Decision Making” is composed of 2 invited speakers’ presentations and 14 papers short presentations related to various aspects of Decision Making approaches. The Stream on “Policy Analytics”, organized by the DASIG Decision Analysis Special Interest Group, includes 9 presentations and 1 plenary discussion about its main topic.

The special talks of the

EWG-DSS Stream on “Collaborative Decision Making” are presented by Denis Bouyssou, a Senior Researcher at the CNRS in Paris, about the topic: “Should you believe in the Shanghai ranking ?”; and Sihem Amer-Yahia, Principal Research Scientist at Qatar Computing Research Center, who speaks about: “Social Analytics to Encourage Collabo-ration on the Social Web of News”.

The rich diversity of topics

and approaches of Decision Making presented in this Workshop is itself an invaluable source of inspiration for further investigations in the area. We are extremely proud to be able to co-organize jointly with the DASIG and CNRS-LAMSADE such an interesting event. Complete details about the Workshop Program and its Special Talks can be found at its Homepage: http://ewgdssparis2011.wordpress.com/

The digital version of the

Workshop Proceedings can be downloaded via the link: http://ewgdssparis2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/ewg-dss-dasig-workshop-proceedings-online-version.pdf .

Upcoming Events:

EURO XXV - 2012

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The 25th European Conference on Operational Research

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

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

EWG-DSS Stream: “Decision Support System“ Organizers: Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam & Rita Ribeiro Dealines for Abstracts: March 1st, 2012. Call for papers available online via the link:

http://ewgdss.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/cfp-euro-xxv-vilnius2012-dss-stream.pdf.

We hope to see you in Vilnius!

Assisting the EWG-DSS

The EWG-DSS Coordination Board is constantly looking for volunteers to assist its members with some management activities.

If you are interested, contact us: ewg-dss@fccdp.com

Thank you!

EWG-DSS Liverpool-2012

Workshop on Decision Support Systems & Operations Management Trends and Solutions in Industries

April 12-13th, 2012

The purpose of the EWG-DSS Liverpool-2012 Workshop is to bring together professionals of the research areas related to Decision-Making in the Operations Management context, as well as their respective areas of applications. Particular focus will be given to recent developments, their methodologies, concepts and implementation details, specially in the Industry.

We are very grateful to the support of Jorge Hernández, one of our EWG-DSS Coordination Board Assistants, in locally organizing this meeting in the School of Management of the University of Liverpool in April 2012.

Members of the EWG-DSS working group are expected to participate and to encourage the participation of other related professionals, so that further collaboration can be promoted on a larger scale. Proposals for panels or demo presentations in special sessions are very welcome. As in previous years, Special Issues of International Editorials will be published with selected papers presented during the Workshop.

Workshop Call for Participation:

http://ewgdssliverpool2012.wordpress.com/call-for-papers/

The workshop publication will consider a book abstracts which, in this opportunity, will be addressed within its corresponding ISBN number. In addition, one Special issue and one special joint publication, based on the Production Planning & Control and the European Journal of Operatioal Research Journals, respectively, will be produced from the usual best papers selection.

PP&C ISSN:

0953-7287

EJOR ISSN:

0377-2217

Further details about the Workshop Program and Publications, Special Talks, Venue, Registration and Accommodation will be available at the Workshop Homepage: http://ewgdssliverpool2012.wordpress.com/ .

The EWG-DSS Coordinators are looking forwards to welcome you in Liverpool next year!

EWG-DSS Coordinators: Pascale Zaraté (Coordinator) IRIT / Toulouse University , France Fátima Dargam (Coordinator) SimTech Simulation Technology, Austria; ILTC, Brazil Rita Ribeiro (Board Chair) UNINOVA - CA3, Portugal Jorge Hernández (Board Assistant) University of Liverpool, UK Boris Delibašić (Board Assistant) University of Belgrade, Serbia Shaofeng Liu (Board Assistant) University of Plymouth, UK EWG-DSS EURO Homepage - EWG-DSS Blog - EWG-DSS LinkedIn - EWG-DSS IRIT Server

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

Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam, Rita Ribeiro, Boris Delibašić, Jorge Hernández & Shaofeng Liu.

For updates or for joining the EWG-DSS, please send an e-mail to ewg-dss@fccdp.com

If you need more information about the group, please contact us or visit our EURO web-site or our Wordpress EWG-DSS Blog.