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No. 12, Year 2013

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

In this Issue Editorial........................................ 1 EWG-DSS Members ................... 2 EWG-DSS Channels................... 2 Interview ..................................... 2 EWG-DSS Award........................ 5 New Board Members.................. 6 Publications................................ 7 EWG-DSS Annual Workshops .. 8 EWG-DSS Meetings ................... 8 Meetings in 2013 ........................ 9 Best Paper Prizes..................... 10 Upcoming Events..................... 10 EWG-DSS Collab-Net Project.. 11 EWG-DSS Survey..................... 11 Other Announcements ............ 12 News about Members .............. 12

Editorial Board The Newsletter of the EURO WG on Decision Support Systems is annually edited by its Coordination Board Members: PascaleZaraté; FátimaDargam; Rita Ribeiro; Jorge Hernández; Boris Delibasic; Shaofeng Liu Isabelle Linden; and Jason Papathanasiou. Comments and announcements for the next issues of the EWG-DSS Newsletter should be sent to the email address below with the subject: “Newsletter”. Email: ewg-dss@fccdp.com

Editorial (by the EURO Working Group on DSS Coordination Board Members)

Dear Euro Working Group members! Dear Friends! The year of 2013 was a well-managed challenge for the EWG-DSS group, resulting in

many successful achievements and fruitful collaborations. We organized three events with wide participation from the DSS community, including also researchers/colleagues from other EURO groups and societies, namely: the EWG-DSS Annual Workshop held in May in Thessaloniki, Greece; the DSS Stream with seven sessions in the EURO XXVI-INFORMS Joint International Conference in Rome, in July; and also the Mini-Conference in Graz, Austria in October, which was a joint-event with the EURO Working Groups E-CUBE, MSCP and ORAFM. From those events, the EWG-DSS published two proceedings and organized several Journal Special Issues in IJDSST, JDS, CEJOR, IJDSS, as well as its annual Springer book edition in the Lecture Notes of Business Information Processing. More information about those editions you will find in the Publications section of this issue.

Yes, the group has been as productive as ever! To cope with the overhead workload that all those achievements imply, the EWG-DSS has augmented its board of coordinators. We are very pleased to announce that the long term and active EWG-DSS members: Isabelle Linden (Namur University) and Jason Papathanasiou (University of Macedonia) have been invited and joined the EWG-DSS Coordination Board this year! We are quite happy to have them on-board and extremely pleased with their high quality cooperation. On behalf of all the group members we thank them for joining the board and for supporting the group on its continuous successful way!

The year of 2013 did not only add values on our productive events, publications and augmented group management, but it was also a year of many successful cooperation initiatives. One of them was the promotion of the “Best Paper Prize”. This initiative does not compete with the EWG-DSS Yearly Award, since it happens within each of our organized events. In 2013 it counted with the cooperation of some sponsor-companies and distributed licenses of simulation and DSS-area-related software packages as prizes for best presented papers. The products were: Analytica, sponsored by Lumina; Decision Explorer, sponsored by Banxia; Arena, sponsored by Rockwell Automation; and Simio Packages, sponsored by Simio. Another cooperation initiative within the group this year was towards the advances of the EWG-DSS Collaboration Academic Social Network (Project Collab-Net). We currently count with development support of researchers from the University of Macedonia - Greece; the University of Namur – Belgium and from the University of Pernambuco in Recife - Brazil, for bringing the project forward. We are very grateful to all the involved persons in this project cooperation and we hope that we will be able to report about its progress soon.

For the coming year of 2014, two important events are on the way: (1) the GDN-2014 Joint International Conference of the INFORMS GDN Section and the EURO Working Group on DSS, in Toulouse during June 10th-13th, with special focus on “Group Decision Making and Web 3.0”; and (2) the DSS stream in the IFORS-2014, the 20th Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies on “The Art of Modeling”, which will take place in Barcelona, Spain during July 13th-18th. Planned publications covering the 2014 events include the Springer Proceedings in the LNBIP series, Conference Proceedings (IRIT); Journal Special Issues; and the EWG-DSS Springer book edition in the Lecture Notes of Business Information Processing, which will exceptionally have an open call for papers in 2014.

In this Newsletter we summarize the successful achievements of 2013, together with the information from members, their projects and publications. As a group we have reached far and we are very happy about it! Moreover, we are completely aware that all the successful impact that we have made so far within the DSS communities and international societies, would not have been possible without the consistent support from all of the EWG-DSS members. Hence, we sincerely thank You All for your contribution. We hope you enjoy the 2013-Newsletter, specially its honorable interview with the EURO-Legend and co-founder and organizer of the EWG-DSS: Prof. Jakob Krarup! We wish you all Happy Season Holidays and A Wonderful New Year! We appreciated your support and collaboration in 2013 and we look forwards to working even more with you in 2014! Best wishes from the EWG-DSS Coordination Board!

Shaofeng Liu, Rita Ribeiro, Jorge Hernández, Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam, Boris Delibasic,

Isabelle Linden and Jason Papathanasiou. (Photo: Thessaloniki, Greece. May, 2013)

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EWG-DSS Members “The members of our group are responsible for its success!” In 2012 the EWG-DSS closed the year with 163 members. In 2013, we reached the number of 234 registered members with 210 members in its Linked-In Group of Interest.

As can be checked above, since

1999, the group membership has grown substantially and we are proud to continuously attract the interest of new members and the participation of old ones in the organized scientific events and editions of the group.

An updated list of registered members with their respective email-addresses can be sent to you, by request (mail to: ewg-dss@fccdp.com).

EWG-DSS Channels “Our communication channels are our main tools to cooperate!”

The EWG-DSS communication channels are described below. Use them to get in touch with the group Coordination Board Members and with its members.

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

This mailing-list is devoted only to the registered EWG-DSS members for announcements, projects information, as well as 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, links to the organized Workshops, projects, publications and news about research collaborations.

• EWG-DSS – EURO Homepage

http://www.euro-online.org/web/ewg/10/ewg-decision-support-systems The EWG-DSS page at the EURO online site is the group’s official homepage. There you find a summary of the detailed information you find in the blog and the links to EWG-DSS’s organised Streams in EURO K Conferences, Annual Workshops; Mini-Conferences; Awards, etc.

• EWG-DSS – IRIT Server

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

The EWG-DSS Server is hosted by 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

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

The Linked-In EWG-DSS Group has currently 210 members (status of 29.12.2013). This group is open to all Linked-In users. There you find briefings of the EWG-DSS’s activities, discussions of related topics, job announcements, Conference calls for participation, Journals CfP, etc. If you like networking, you should take advantage of this 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

In the EWG-DSS Slideshare account 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. Please contact us for more details.

Interview

Jakob Krarup Professor Emeritus, Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark www.kfunigraz.ac.at/sor/Mitarbeiter/Krarup.htm EWG-DSS: Jakob, it is a great pleasure for the EWG-DSS to interview you for this Newsletter. We know you have spent so far more than 50 years with Operational Research (OR) in one way or another. How did it all begin? JK: To those who graduated from a Danish upper secondary school in 1954, only three options seemed realistic. The bloodthirsty ones joined the medical school or became dentists, others enrolled at the Technical University, and the remaining few including myself enjoyed two years of compulsory military service (air defence) before deciding what to do next. The Krarup-family has for several centuries been dominated by pious clergymen including a single bishop, professional musicians as were both my parents, teachers and linguists, notably with a background in German and Latin. What to do: walk in their footprints? A lot can be accomplished via hard work, diligence, some ideas of the direction to be taken plus at least a minimum of talent for something. Well, a keen interest combined with a modest talent for music was clearly inherited and some leisure hours during my teenage years were spent accordingly with the clarinet as a member of an orchestra, actually a

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kind of an incubator for coming generations of first-rate musicians, led by the country’s finest Mozart conductor at that time. But, unlike today, I hated to be pushed to perform so the only rebellion against my parents was to put the clarinet away and instead focus on the weekly maths assignments. But diligence and talent does not suffice without unexpected strokes of luck in crucial moments where luck can be specific events or meetings with the right people at the right moments. In the mid 50s OR and computer science were still to become academic disciplines and no courses were on the curriculum of any Danish university before the early 60s.To go for pure maths was indeed a possibility though not really appealing viewed against later career prospects. Upon two years of study at the Technical University I failed in June 1958 to pass an exam in electrical engineering; a great luck in retrospect and no wonder: it was really a disgusting subject. By that time, however, Denmark’s first professor of applied mathematics had recently been appointed. Besides being an inspiring teacher, he was also the first Chairman of the Board of Regnecentralen (RC), Danish Institute of Computing Machinery, where Denmark’s first computer called DASK was built and officially inaugurated in February 1958. My inspiring teacher was approached and arranged for me to join the staff at RC subject to the condition that the remaining part of the studies towards the M.Sc. degree should be completed concurrently. The staff at RC comprised an astronomer, some graduates in engineering, economics or political science, and a gathering of undergraduate students who felt uncomfortable with what they were doing. We were about 20 in total, all curious to find out what DASK – a construction of monstrous size which occupied two floors of a spacious villa – could do. 56,000 basic operations per second. 2,048 words each of 40 bits. 2 magnetic drums. I wonder whether the term computer science actually meant anything to anybody at that time. It is tempting to say that the field here was invented ‘on location’ and achievements, including the development of a full ALGOL-compiler, were indeed made with far reaching impact on other researchers in many corners of the world. Still with no flair for electrical gadgets and no professional niche in sight, I found the climate around DASK and its users appealing in every conceivable aspect. As the variety of applications further broadened new books had to be purchased for RC’s library. Among

these was Steven Vajda’s ‘Mathematical Programming’. A first entry to Operational Research, OR, a magic word! RC established an OR division. Were we two or three? A new world opened itself before us. From conceptually simple scenario analyses we moved on via linear pro-gramming and were soon spellbound by the fascinating computationally ‘intractable’ integers. Actually, this fascination about zeros and ones – to the exclusion of almost everything between these two extremes – has remained with me ever since and appeared to be crucial to my later career. The prime influence of Steven’s book cannot be overrated in this context. It was instrumental when RC’s OR division was created and, sans comparaison, our key reference during these first years of development. Not only did it introduce the various families of optimisation problems and the algorithmic tools employed for their solution but also the scope and limitations of mathematical programming as a means for decision support were accounted for. RC: The period later referred to as ‘the Golden Years’ terminated in 1964 when RC, due to an appalling incompetence of some individuals in the Danish government, had to surrender to IBM. The staff broke up. Nine full professors could afterwards be grateful for having been part of a highly esteemed team. EWG-DSS: This was not the end, but, perhaps, only the end of the beginning. What happened thereafter? JK: Almost Churchill’s words in his speech (1942) after El Alamein! Well, the direction set by the lesson learnt so far was further pursued in my Ph.D. work at the Technical University. I am grateful to my thesis supervisor at that time, not primarily for his supervision as such since our professional interests hardly intersected, but for his emphasis on the significance of building a personal network and his creativity in finding support for conference participation and the like. The most important event of that period was a two-week NATO Summer School on Contemporary Methods of Discrete Mathematics (Varenna, Italy, 1966) directed by two leading scholars in the field, Frank Harary (Mr. Graph Theory among friends!) and Bernard Roy, who later became the 4th President of EURO. Besides an invited speaker was awaited with particular anticipation, a certain Professor S. Vajda ... . This first meeting with Steven in person had a considerable impact on my further Ph.D. work. Feeling unable

to follow my supervisor’s ideas on statistical equilibrium and the like, much more fruitful ways were pointed out by Steven and brought me eventually out of the wilderness. Ph.D. in 1967, afterwards affiliated with the Technical University, then in 1971 co-founder and daily manager of a consulting firm: day-long meetings, dark suit, white collar + tie, heavy lunches. The subjects dealt with included: highway construction / dimensioning of dykes / warning systems / banking (liquidity planning, foreign exchange) / credit unions (strategic planning) / distribution (newspapers, beer, frozen goods) / locational decisions (high schools, power plants, warehouses, hospitals, governmental institutions, air cargo) / plant lay-out (a German university hospital) / drug manufacturing / school timetables / asphalt / archeology (Babylonian texts) / conference management. The best side effect of these endeavours was in courses taught afterwards to convincingly tell the students that OR has much more to offer than mathematical abstraction and subtleties. Another consulting company was established a year or two before ours by an American who married a Danish girl and settled in our country. By definition we were competitors but met nevertheless frequently for joint research. Both of us returned to academia in the mid 70s on a full-time basis but kept writing together. In total about 40 joint papers resulted. EWG-DSS: NATO’s support is sometimes acknowledged by organisers of scientific meetings. You attended a NATO Summer School on your, shall we say, rather thorny road towards your Ph.D. degree. Did you have other good experiences with NATO? JK: A key event in identifying subjects for my Ph.D. thesis and building the personal network was indeed the aforementioned NATO Summer School in 1966. Afterwards followed the fall term in 1969 spent at Univ. of California, Berkeley, which, amongst others, offered a unique possibility for visiting George Dantzig and Dick Cottle at nearby Stanford University. The three of us were shortly after in charge of the NATO Conference, ‘Optimization Methods, Large-Scale Resource Allocation’ (Elsinore, Denmark, 1971) which in turn led to membership of NATO’s Systems Science Panel (1974-79), the main sponsor of a series of subsequent events, notably the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Combinatorial Programming (Versailles, France, 1974) and the

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NATO Advanced Research Institute on Discrete Optimization (Vancouver, 1977). In retrospect one may say that these meetings were crucial in propelling combinatorial optimisation and related areas to prominence. Moreover, several of those who later became the central figures in the further development assembled here for the first time. It should be noted that NATO’s role in this respect was completely disentangled from NATO’s military activities. Participation was not restricted to people from member countries and the resulting proceedings volumes were made accessible to all as part of the open literature. EWG-DSS: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen, has been your main platform for many years. And is it still? JK: University of Copenhagen (UC) was established on 1st June 1479 by permission of Pope Sixtus IV. Although universities should be the foremost sites for new ideas they exhibit sometimes a conservatism which can be hard to beat. Where should an interdisciplinary bastard like OR fit in? TTT: Things Take Time. OR was eventually welcomed at the Dept. of Economics and, in my case, at DIKU, Dept. of Computer Science. DIKU 1969-75: part-time, 1975-2006: full-time, 2006- : emeritus professor. Main activity: general OR with particular emphasis on combinatorial optimisation and algorithmics. More recently: history of OR with focus on some classical problems and on the pioneers who paved the road before us. A parallel activity throughout was, and is still, the international promotion of OR, notably within the frameworks of NATO, IFORS, and EURO. By my official retirement in 2006, I realised to my surprise that being promoted to full professor is not the top of an academic career as there still is a step on the ladder to be climbed. Emeritus professor, however, is the top of the top. Maximum maximorum! Far away from the absolute limit of democracy where everybody meets with everybody else all the time. No specific duties are imposed upon me anymore. Among the privileges granted to professores emeriti is the freedom of selecting from the menu by saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to invitations to do this or that. Well, honestly I do miss some of my students, in particular those from abroad. The 11 years (1991-2001) spent with my MBA students at Vrije Universiteit Brussel were a particularly good experience. All races were represented in the audience; 1½

weeks in January, 1 week in April, 30 lectures, written exam. I am deeply grateful to J. Pierre Brans who invited me to undertake this task. Also missed are the students at Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz! Note, by the way, where my homepage can be found. The many October-November visits over the years paid to Graz and the beautiful Steiermark are among my fondest memories. EWG-DSS: Amongst others your CV reflects some particularly strong connections with Poland. How come? JK: Stanislaw Walukiewicz, better known as Staszek, was among the participants at the Versailles meeting in 1974. With the main purpose of providing staff members from Staszek’s SRI (Systems Research Institute, Warsaw) and graduate DIKU students specializing in OR with an opportunity of addressing an international audience we organised in 1978 a seminar in Zaborów near Warsaw. Senior researchers were invited from Hungary, Sweden, and (West) Germany. Thanks to generous grants from Danish research foundations, the same group met again a year later in Denmark, now accompanied by leading scholars from England, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and USA. Furthermore, several practitioners and virtually all Danish researchers within the area of discrete optimisation and combinatorics were here brought together for the first time. DAPS Society, European OR Seminars, was established in 1984 as a formal framework for this series; the ‘hard core’ of participants has been preserved throughout whereas the target group was gradually expanded over the years. Almost annual meetings have been held ever since; the list of countries visited as of today includes Austria, The Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, and Poland. I cannot resist the temptation to note that no fewer than five later presidents of EURO and four later winners of the EURO Gold Medal have attended at least one DAPS meeting! Poland: Three years (1990-92) have been spent as a member of a European consortium sponsored by the TEMPUS programme of the European Commission with the purpose of building the entire curriculum for what afterwards became Warsaw Business School having Staszek as its Rector. Though with a different perspective, a similar exercise was carried out in 1995-97 for University of Mining and Metallurgy, Craców. Poland ... and Hungary: upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989

some obstetric aid was provided during my presidency of EURO to facilitate their national OR societies´ entry in both IFORS and EURO. EWG-DSS: Reference is made to EURO now and then in your answers to the previous questions. Can you briefly summarize what EURO in general has meant to you and, maybe, still means? JK: The engagement in DAPS Society has been a true con amore activity spanning 35 years so far. I look forward each year to the annual January dinner at our Stammtisch in an Italian down-town Copenhagen restaurant since the mid 80s offering a real red carpet treatment to “Il Generale” (me!) + Co. Then there is the forthcoming DAPS 2014, scheduled to be held in Craców in September. Notwithstanding the longest single activity is EURO. I was not present when EURO was founded in January 1975 at the Hotel Sheraton, Brussels, in conjunction with the EURO I conference but ‘joined the party’ on 21st June when the first EJOR Editorial Board Meeting was held in Paris. Two persons were instrumental when EURO was born: Hans-Jürgen Zimmermann and J. Pierre Brans, now both past presidents of EURO, and, by the way, both obvious recipients of the EURO Gold Medal. “Meeting the right people in the right moments”: I owe a lot to J. Pierre in whose footprints I literally have walked during our visits to every corner of EURO. You asked for a brief summary? About 20% of my 4-page CV is devoted to EURO and yet it is nowhere said that no EURO-k conference after EURO II has been missed. The list of other EURO engagements is pretty long anyway: Council member for 28 years; EC member for 8 years; PC Chair for two conferences; PC or OC member for two others; Organiser or invited speaker at 8 ESIs; Co-founder and member of 7 EWGs, of course including our EWG-DSS; EGM Chairman of one jury and member of another; EDSM first recipient (2009) and jury member in 2013; EJOR Editorial Board member for 16 years; Editor or co-editor of 9 special issues. Furthermore: designer of the ties and scarves printed in Denmark for EURO X (Belgrade 1989); 2nd printing of same where 34 kilogrammes constituted the main part of my luggage en route to EURO XX (Jerusalem, 1995). The customs officers at Ben Gurion Airport were not amused ... . EURO’s best idea ever? Concern for the next generation! At the initiative of J. Pierre the first EURO Summer Institute (ESI) materialized in 1984 and

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EURO Summer/Winter Institutes (ESWI) have been organised regularly ever since. Each student participant in any ESWI will afterwards have a personal network of academic soulmates representing up to 20 countries. How to preserve it and keep it further nurtured? By establishing an EWG on the last day! Who is heading today’s OR departments at several European universities? Who are among today’s main contributors to our professional journals? From where might EURO recruit its coming presidents and EWG chairpersons? Answer to all three questions: look at EURO’s best idea ever. The famous Madeira-ESI in 1989 on DSS is among the most blatant examples. What EURO still means to me? Well the interest in devoting time and energy to EURO matters did in no way fade away upon my retirement in 2006. Most recent EURO activities: 1) to author a joint paper with Sarah Fores, Manager of EURO, “On the origins of OR and its institutions”, Invited Review, Central European J. OR 21.2 (2013) 265-275, 2) to be a member of the EDSM Jury who unanimously agreed on Theo Stewart as the 2013 EDSM laureate, and 3) to accept the honourable invitation from EWG-DSS and three other EWGs to deliver the Opening Lecture based on 1) at the recent EURO Mini-Conference (Graz, Austria, 2013). Finally, 4) to accept the equally honourable invitation to be interviewed for this EWG-DSS Newsletter 2013. EWG-DSS: Jakob, thank you very much for this enjoyable Interview!

Contributing to the 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”.

EWG-DSS Award The annual EWG-DSS-Award, launched in 2011, is a motivating initiative among researchers. It allows that PhD students or young researchers, to have their papers selected as best and most innovative presented work, among the papers submitted to the EWG-DSS organised scientific events of the same year. The winner is rewarded with a modest prize in money, sponsored by the EWG-DSS. Winner of the 2012-Award:

In 2012, among the most innovative presented work of young researchers, in the EWG-DSS organized workshops and conference streams, the EWG-DSS Coordination Board is pleased to announce that Gwendolin Geier, from

University of Central Lancashire, was granted with the “EWG-DSS 2012-Award“,

with the paper “The Benefits of Enterprise Systems for SMEs”, a joint work with Marion Schulze, Yahaya Yusuf and Ahmed Musa, that was presented in the EWG-DSS Liverpool 2012 Workshop in April 2012. A full version of Gwendolin’s paper was published in the Springer LNBIP EWG-DSS 2012 Edition.

Below you can see Gwendolin Geier with the EWG-DSS Award certificate conferred to her in 2012. The Award prize was of € 300.00.

We sincerely congratulate Gwendolin Geier and her co-authors for that achievement!

Winner of the 2013-Award:

In 2013, the EWG-DSS award has been granted to Daouda Kamissoko with the paper "Decision Support System for infrastructure network disruption manage-ment", a joint work with: Pascale Zaraté, and

François Peres, that was presented in the EWG-DSS Thessaloniki-2013 Workshop, in Greece, in May 2013.

The EWG-DSS Award prize for 2013 is of € 300.00 and will be officially conferred to Daouda Kamissoko within the next EWG-DSS meeting in July 2014, in Toulouse, during GDN2014.

We sincerely congratulate Daouda and his co-authors for their winning paper of the EWG-DSS 2013 Award! The “EWG-DSS Award 2014″ can be yours! Participate! How to apply? To apply for the annual EWG-DSS Award, you only need to participate in one of our Workshops, Mini-Conferences or Session Streams organised by the group and allow your work to be part of our selection! More details can be found on http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/awards/ .

The EWG-DSS hopes to count with sponsorship from research funds and from the industrial sector to make the future “EWG-DSS-Awards” more financially appealing. You are encouraged to support this initiative by financially sponsoring it if possible, or participating and/or disseminating this information among your students, colleagues, research partners and collaborators.

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New Board Members

This year we are proud that two

very active EWG-DSS members have joined the Coordination Board. Isabelle Linden and Jason Papathanasiou: welcome aboard! Here you find their comments on joining the Board, as well their short CVs.

Isabelle Linden: “Joining the CollabNet project gave me the opportunity to interact closer with the members of the EWG-DSS committee. I knew that this team is scientifically dynamic, I had the pleasure to discover a friendly and enthusiastic environment. I received the invitation to get involved in the board as an honor and a recognition for the quality of our previous collaboration. I'm happy to accept and I will offer the best of myself in serving every member of the group and in contributing to the excellence of our scientific life.”

Isabelle Linden is Associate Professor of Information Management at the University of Namur in Belgium, Department of Business Administration. She obtained her Ph.D. in Computer Sciences from the University of Namur (2007) with a dissertation studying Temporal Coordination Languages. She also holds a M.Sc. in Philosophy (1999) and a M.Sc. in Mathematics (1995) from the University of Liège, Belgium. She is member of the CoordiNam Laboratory and the FoCuS Research Group. Combining theoretical computer science and business administration, Isabelle Linden's main research domain regards Information, Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence. She explores their integration within systems as Enterprise Information Systems, Decision Support Systems and Business Intelligence systems. She was involved in several research projects founded by the Walloon Region where her team was in charge of the conception of intelligent modules. The work of Isabelle Linden can be found in several international edited journals, books chapters and conferences. She serves as reviewer

and program committee member in several international journals, conferences and workshops.

Jason Papathanasiou: “An invitation to join the EWG-DSS board can only be considered as a challenge and a privilege, as it involves working with a distinguished and highly experienced group of researchers in the DSS field at a European (and not only) level. It is also an honor to serve in a board along with excellent researchers, colleagues and I dare now say friends as well. The support I received by the 7 board members was a key factor to the successful outcome of the Thessaloniki 2013 Workshop, in the University of Macedonia, Greece. I am confident that working with the other board members, will, among other things, promote my personal research agenda and offer me new opportunities for collaborations. The team is one of the most active working groups of EURO with a long history of organizing successful events and initiatives and I can only hope to contribute to a fruitful future as well.” Jason Papathanasiou is Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Administration, University of Macedonia, Greece. He has a PhD in Operational Research and a degree in Physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has worked for a number of years at various institutes and has co-organised and participated in a number of international scientific conferences and workshops. He was the deputy coordinator of the FP6 funded project GEMCONBIO and of the FP7 project TESS; he has participated in many other international research projects in FP6, FP7, Interreg and COST. He is also a member of the TDP Panel of COST and has published a number of papers in various international scientific peer referred journals and international conferences.

Publications

In this section you find the list of recent EWG-DSS editions, as well as individual publications of members of the group, who sent their information for this Newsletter.

We encourage all EWG-DSS

members to send to us their lists of most recent publications for the next Newsletter!

EWG-DSS Recent Editions: Edited Special issues and books  

• LNBIP Springer Book: Decision Support Systems II - Recent Developments Applied to DSS Network Environments. Editors: Jorge E. Hernández, Shaofeng Liu, Boris Delibašić, Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam, Rita Ribeiro. Edition: ISSN: 1865-1348. Volume 164, 2013, Publisher: SPRINGER. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing Springer, Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York, Editor: Springer-LNBIP, ISBN: 978-3-642-41076-5 (Print) 978-3-642-41077-2; DOI:DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-41077-2. 09/2013.

• Proceedings of the EURO Mini-Conference Graz-2013 on "Collaborative Decision Systems in Economics and in Complex Societal and Environmental Applications", Editors: F.C.C. Dargam, U. Leopold-Wildburger, S. Pickl, D.DeTombe, L.Plá, S.Liu, J. Hernández, B. Delibasic, R. Ribeiro, P. Zaraté. 10/2013; DOI:ISBN: 978-3-943207-06-4 . Graz, Austria, 2013.

• Proceedings of the EWG-DSS THESSALONIKI-2013 WORKSHOP on “Exploring New Directions for Decisions in the Internet Age “. F.Dargam, B.Delibasic, J.E.Hernández, S.Liu, J. Papatanasiou, R.Ribeiro, P.Zaraté (editors). Thessaloniki, GREECE, May 29-31, 2013. Digital Proceedings: http://ewgdssthessaloniki2013.files.wordpress.com/2013/05

• Following the Thessaloniki-2013 Workshop and the EURO Informs Rome-2013 EWG-DSS DSS Stream, the EWG-DSS organizes a Springer Book of the Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP). This Springer Book of Post Proceedings on “Impact of the

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Web of Things in Decision Support Systems for Global Environments “ edited by F.Dargam, J.E.Hernández, P.Zaraté, S.Liu, R.Ribeiro, B.Delibasic, J. Papatanasiou. Expected book publication: 2nd Quarter of 2014.

• Following the EURO Mini-Conference Graz-2013, a Special Issue on "Advances on Decision Sciences and its Decision Support Technologies", with papers of the DSS Stream DSS, in the International Journal of Decision Support System Technology - IJDSST, is organized. F. Dargam, J. Hernández, B. Delibasic (Guest Editors).

• Following the EWG-DSS organized Stream on DSS within the EUROXXV in Vilnius in 2012, the EWG-DSS organized a Special Issue on "Modelling Decision Systems for Critical Applications" in the International Journal of Decision Support System Technology - IJDSST. Guest Editors: Fatima Dargam, Shaofeng Liu, Isabelle Linden. IJDSST Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2013.

• Following the EWG-DSS organized Stream on DSS within the EUROXXV in Vilnius in 2012, the EWG-DSS organized a Special Issue on "Prediction, Simulation and Optimization Methods for Decision Making" in the International Journal of Decision Support System Technology - IJDSST. Guest Editors: Fatima Dargam, Shaofeng Liu, Isabelle Linden. IJDSST Volume 5, Issue 3, September 2013.

Authored Book Editions

It is our pleasure to announce the publication of Pascale Zaraté’s new book “Tools for Collaborative decision-Making" John Wiley & Sons, January 2013.

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1848215169.html

Recent Members’ Publications:  • Arnaud Oglaza, Romain Laborde,

Pascale Zaraté. Authorization policies: Using Decision Support System for context-aware protection of user's private data (regular paper). Dans / In : IEEE International Symposium on UbiSafe Computing, Melbourne (Australia), 16/07/2013-18/07/2013, july 2013.

• Claassen, G. D. H. (2014). "Mixed integer (0–1) fractional programming for decision support in paper production industry." Omega 43: 21-29. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305048313000613

• Daouda Kamissoko, François Pérès, Pascale Zaraté. Technological networks robustness and resilience assessment (regular paper). Dans / In : International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Systems Management (IESM 2013), Rabat, Morocco, 28/10/2013-30/10/2013, El Koursi E. M., Khaddour M., Hanafi S., Macedo R., Cherkaoui A. (Eds.), IEEE - Morocco Section , 2013.

• Daouda Kamissoko, Pascale Zaraté, François Pérès. Decision aid problems criteria for infrastructure networks vulnerability analysis (regular paper). Dans / In : International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies (CoDIT 2013), Hammamet, Tunisia, 06/05/2013-08/05/2013, Giua Alessandro , Kacem Imed , Hüllermeier Eyke (Eds.), IEEE Computer Society, (support électronique), may 2013.

• Drake P.R., Lee D.M. and Hussain M (2013) “The lean and agile purchasing portfolio model”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Vol 18, Issue 1, pp 3-20.

• E. Shahamatnia, I. Dorotovic, R.A. Ribeiro, and J.M. Fonseca “A PSO/Snake Hybrid Algorithm for Determining Differential Rotation of Coronal Bright Points”, In the proceedings of the 5th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence (IJCCI-ECTA), Vilamoura, Portugal, 20-22 September, 2013. (Received the best Student Paper Award)

• Fatima C.C. Dargam, Isabelle Linden, Shaofeng Liu, Rita A. Ribeiro, Pascale Zaraté. “The Development Roadmap of the EWG-DSS Collab-Net Project: A Social Network Perspective of DSS

Research Collaboration in Europe”. In book: Decision Support Systems II - Recent Developments Applied to DSS Network Environments, Edition: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, Volume 164, 2013, Chapter: I, Publisher: SPRINGER. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing Springer, Heidelberg Dordrecht London New York, Editors: Jorge E. Hernández, Shaofeng Liu, Boris Delibašić, Pascale Zaraté, Fátima Dargam, Rita Ribeiro, pp.pp 1-18. 09/2013; DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-41077-2_1 ISBN: 978-3-642-41076-5 (Print) 978-3-642-41077-2

• Luís Teixeira, Rita A. Ribeiro, Gabriel Lopes, António Falcão, Ricardo Raminhos, “BrainMap - A Navigation Support System in a Tourism Case Study”. 4th IFIP WG 5.5/SOCOLNET Doctoral Conference on Computing, Electrical and Industrial Systems, DoCEIS 2013, Technological Innovation for the Internet of Things. L.M. Camarinha, S. Tomic, P. Graça (Eds). Springer, Costa da Caparica, Portugal, 2013, pp. 99–106. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-37291-9_11

• Luís F. S. Teixeira, Gabriel P. Lopes, Rita A. Ribeiro (2013) Language Independent Extraction of Key Terms: An Extensive Comparison of Metrics. In: Filipe J, Fred A (eds) Agents and Artificial Intelligence, vol 358. Communications in Computer and Information Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, pp 69-82. DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-36907-0_5

• Mora, J. M. Fonseca, R. Ribeiro. Real-time Image Recovery Using Temporal Image Fusion. IEEE Proceedings of the International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, FUZZIEEE, India, 7-10 July (2013).

• Pinto, A; Ribeiro, R.A.; Nunes, I.L. (2013) Ensuring the Quality of Occupational Safety Risk Assessment, Risk Analysis, Vol. 33(3), pp 409-419, DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2012.01898.x.

• Pascale Zaraté, Jacqueline Konate, Guy Camilleri. Collaborative Decision Making Tools : A Comparative Study Based on Functionalities (regular paper). Dans / In : Group Decision and Negotiation (GDN 2013), Stockholm, Sweden, 17/06/2013-21/06/2013, Bilyana Martinovski (Eds.), Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, p. 111-122, juin / june 2013.

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• Philippe Marrast, Pascale Zaraté, Anne Mayere. How to Support Coordination Through Annotations? A Longitudinal Case Study of Nurses’ Work in an Oncology Hospital (Poster) (poster). Dans / In : Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) (CSCW 2013), San Antonio, Texas, USA, 23/02/2013-27/02/2013, Springer USA, february 2013.

• R. A. Ribeiro, A. Falcão, A.Mora, J. M. Fonseca. FIF: A Fuzzy information fusion algorithm based on multi-criteria decision making, Knowledge-Based Systems journal (2013).URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.knosys.2013.08.032.

Thanks to all group members who contributed to this section.

EWG-DSS Annual Workshops Since 2011 the EWG-DSS has been organising at least one Workshop per year. With the workshops our group has made a step forwards within its main purpose of establishing a platform for encouraging state-of-the-art high quality research and collaboration work within the DSS community. Other aims of the EWG-DSS group are: • Encourage the exchange of information among practitioners, end-users, and researchers in the area of Decision Systems. • Enforce the networking among the DSS communities available and facilitate activities that are essential for the start-up of international cooperation research and projects. • Facilitate professional academic and industrial opportunities for its members. • Favour the development of innovative models, methods and tools in the field Decision Support and related areas. • Actively promote the interest on Decision Systems in the scientific community by organizing dedicated workshops, seminars, mini-conferences and conference streams in major conferences, as well as editing special and contributed issues in relevant scientific journals.

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.

. Liverpool (UK) – 2012;

. Vilnius (Lithuania) – 2012.

. Thessaloniki (Greece) – 2013.

. Rome (Italy) – 2013.

. Graz (Austria) – 2013.

Meetings in 2013

In 2013, the EWG-DSS organise one Workshop, one DSS Stream within the EURO XXVI Conference in Rome and one Euro-mini Conference in Graz. These three events allowed the group to promote two official annual meetings!

The EWG-DSS Thessaloniki-2013 Workshop on Exploring New Directions for Decisions in the Internet Age

The first meeting of the EWG-DSS in 2013 took place in Thessaloniki, Greece, within the EWG-DSS Liverpool-2013 Workshop on “Exploring New Directions for Decisions in the Internet Age”. It was organized in cooperation with Jason Papathanasiou, EWG-DSS member and Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Business Administration in the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece, where the EWG-DSS Workshop took place. We are extremely grateful to all the local arrangements and help received from him and his Team. Key-note speakers:

The 2013 EWG-DSS Thessaloniki’s workshop counted with seven invited key-note speakers:

• Alexis Tsoukias – University Paris Dauphine, France

Talk: “What is a Decision Problem?” • Francesca Toni – Department of

Computing, Imperial College London, UK

Talk: “Computational Argumentation for Decision Support on the Web” • Nikolaos Matsatsinis – Technical

University of Crete, Greece Talk: “Multi-Criteria Analysis and Decision Support” • Petraq Papajorgji – Canadian

Institute of Technology, Tirana, Albania

Talk: “Model-driven architecture in designing and developing complex agricultural and environmental information systems” • Robert Kenward – Vice-Chair of

IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group

Talk: “Concepts, case studies and design for environmental decision support: the TESS project” • Max Henrion – Chief Executive

Officer, Lumina Decision Systems, Inc.

Talk: “Decision Analytics: From Big Data to Clear Decisions with Analytica” • Giuseppe Lugano and Mafalda

Quintas – COST Office Science Officers, Trans-Domain Proposals

Talk: “COST TDP Pilot: Introducing a Pilot Evaluation Procedure for Trans-Disciplinary Proposals” We can certainly say that the Thessaloniki-2013 Workshop was a great success! We had 27 research contributions/presentations, 5 special talks and 2 web-seminars. We would like to acknowledge the interest and cooperation of all the authors who submitted their finished and on-going research work for presentation in this workshop. All presentations were very interesting and there was a high level of information exchange for further fruitful cooperation among all participants.

Details about the Workshop Program, Special Talks, electronic Proceedings, Special Issues and photo gallery can be found at its Homepage: http://ewgdssthessaloniki2013.wordpress.com/ .

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EURO XXVI Rome, Italy July 1-4th, 2013 EWG-DSS Stream on Decision Support System

As usual, the EWG-DSS Coordination Board has organized in the EURO XXVI Conference a Decision Support Systems Stream, which was composed of seven sessions, as follows: S1. Applications in Decision Making & Decision Analysis Chair(s): Pascale Zaraté, Fatima Dargam A Decision Support System For Exchange Rates Selection Problem and An Application In Turkey Aykan Akincilar, Erol Sahin, Ertan GUNER; How Supply Competency Affects FDI Decisions: Some Insights Prabir Bagchi, Miguel Lejeune, Arshad Alam; A decision-making support tool for project manager selection Baruch Keren, Zohar Laslo, Yossi Hadad; Application of Multicriteria Models in Project Portfolio Selection Adiel Teixeira de Almeida, Rudolf Vetschera. S2. Knowledge Management & Decision Systems Chair(s): Shaofeng Liu, Fatima Dargam A BI integrated platform to support dynamic and global resources allocation decisions Isabelle Linden, Shaofeng Liu; Knowledge Network Modelling to Support Decision Making for Strategic Intervention in IT Project-Oriented Change Management Ali ALkhuraiji, Shaofeng Liu, Fenio Annansingh , Jiang Pan; Knowledge Management: An Empirical Analysis of Reuse Daniel OLeary; Optimising Inventory Level of Global Critical Knowledge for Integrated Decision Support Jiang Pan, Shaofeng Liu, Sarah Tuck , Ali ALkhuraiji; S3. Knowledge Management & Decision Making Chair(s): Isabelle Linden, Pascale Zaraté An integrated approach to budget allocation in partnership construction projects based on multiple criteria decision making Hamidreza Koosha, samira samizade; Knowledge Sharing to Support Decision Making Processes in Multinational Corporations K. Nadia Papamichail, Mahmoud Abdelrahman; A multicriteria model for characterizing potential crucial knowledge Sahar Ghrab, Inès SAAD, Gilles Kassel, Faiez Gargouri;

Machine learning integrated optimization for decision making Atiyeh Vaezipour, Amir Mosavi, Ulf Seigerroth. S4. Decision Support, Policy-making & Decision Analysis Chair(s): Fatima Dargam, Isabelle Linden A New Fuzzy Multi-criteria Decision Making Approach for supplier selection problem Hacer Guner Goren, Osman Kulak; Water treatment evaluation for a plant using a hybrid method based on DEMATEL and ANP Erdem Aksakal, Metin Dagdeviren, Ihsan Yüksel; Using System Dynamics in Exploring Ecosystem and Policy-making Mechanism of Taiwan's Digital Content Industries Pin-Chen Jiang, Ting-Lin Lee, Chi-Cheng Huang; Determining direct mailing policy with a decision support system Rim Boudali. S5. Collaborative Decision Making Chair(s): Pascale Zaraté, Jorge E. Hernández Robustness Analysis in Multicriteria Disaggregation – Aggregation Approaches for Group Decision Making Denis Yannacopoulos, Athanasios Spyridakos, Nikos Tsotsolas; Strategic decision making during a disaster Estelle Van Wyk, Venkata Yadavalli; Choosing the Best Anti-Virus in the World by Application of TOPSIS Method Hesam Naie. S6. Decision-Making using Social Networks and Web Resources Chair(s): Shaofeng Liu, Jorge E. Hernández Using Social Network Analysis to Measure Influence and Rank of Efficient Ports Byunghak Leem; Pricing and Order Decisions with Customer Returns in Online Retailing Zhong Yao; A Decision Support System for TmeTabling in Education: A Web-Based Exam Scheduling Application BURCU YILMAZ KAYA, Gökhan KAYA, Metin Dagdeviren. S7. Decision Support for Network Processes & Supply Chain Management Chair(s): Fatima Dargam, Jorge E. Hernández Effect of Wholesale Competition in Supply Chains: Analysis with Multiple Decision Makers Yuly Andrea Arboleda Valencia, Santiago Arango; Supply chains as mobile communicating systems; a system and communication theoretic view Hossein Sharifi, Hossein Attari, Hossam S. Ismail, Jorge E. Hernández;

MCDA and Simulation-Optimization Approach applied to Strategic and Operational Alignment in Supply Chain Management Edson Trevisan, Thiago Brito, Rui Carlos Botter; A Simulation and Assessment Model for Product Lifecycle Management Valentina Boschian, Noemi Augenti, Maria Pia Fanti, Giorgio Iacobellis, Giovanni Lucci, Agostino Marcello Mangini, Walter Ukovich. Following the EWG-DSS Stream on the EUROXXV, the edition of a dedicated Special Issue of the IJDSST International Journal of Decision Support Systems Technology and a Springer LNBIP Book are under edition, based on selected presented papers.

EURO-Mini Conference 2013 Graz, Austria October 17-19th, 2013

The EURO Mini-Conference Graz-2013 on “Collaborative Decision Systems in Economics and in Complex Societal and Environmental Applications”, was jointly organized by the EURO Working Groups on Experimental Economics (EWG E-CUBE), on Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS) on Methodology for Complex Societal Problems (EWG-MCSP) and the EURO Working Group on OR in Agriculture and Forest Management (EWG-ORAFM).during the period of October 17-19,2013, in the Karl-Franzens University of Graz. Invited Speakers: • Jakob Krarup - Professor

Emeritus of the Department of Computer Science of the University of Copenhagen Denmark

Talk: “On the Origins of OR and its Institutions” • Rudolf Vetschera - Professor at

the University of Vienna, Austria, Department of Business Administration / Organization and Planning

Talk: “The multiple dimensions of negotiations: A unified approach” • Rita A. Ribeiro - Professor at CA3,

UNINOVA, Portugal Talk: “Dynamic Multi-criteria Decision Making (MCDM): A framework” • Cor van Dijkum - Professor at

Utrecht University, Department of Methodology and Statistics / Faculty of Social Sciences & Sokrates Consultancy and Engineering, The Netherlands

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Talk: “Complexity is more than complicated. Investigating, simulating and handling complexity: a challenge for system dynamics” • Marion Sabine Rauner - Professor

at the University of Vienna, Austria. School of Business, Economics, and Statistics, Department of Business Administration

Talk: “Prevention of Occupational Injuries at the General Accident Insurance Institution (AUVA): Design and Application of Decision Support Systems for Predicting Subsequent Costs from 2001 to 2011” * * Joint research work with Michaela-Maria Schaffhauser-Linzatti, Johannes Bauerstätter, Bernhard Schwarz, Paul Harper, Klaus Wittig and Beate Mayer • Jusk Ola Eriksson - Professor at

the Department of Forest Resource Management & Forest Planning of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweeden

Talk: “Replicating forest owner behavior in Decision Support Systems: 2 examples of programming formulations“ • Hermann Maurer - Professor of

Informatics, Graz University of Technology, Austria

Talk: “Long range predictions are still more difficult than is usually assumed“

In general the Euro-Mini

Conference Graz-2013 was a great success and we wish to express here our deep gratitude to the Karl-Franzens University of Graz and the team of the Institute of Statistics and Operations Research, head by Prof. Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger, and the local Organizing Committee for their great job in making this event happen in Graz. The proceedings of the EURO-Mini-Conference Graz-2013 is available for download via the link: http://eurominiconferencegraz2013.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/emc-graz-2013-proceedings1.pdf

Best Paper Prizes EWG-DSS Best Papers Prize

During the EWG-DSS 2013 Thessaloniki Workshop and the EURO Mini-Conference Graz-2013, licenses of Simulation and DSS-area-related software packages were sorted among the participants as prizes for best presented papers, namely: • A License of Analytica, sponsored

by Lumina (http://www.lumina.com/);

• A full academic license of Decision Explorer, sponsored by Banxia (http://www.banxia.com/);

• A License of Arena, sponsored by Rockwell Automation (http://www.arenasimulation.com/Arena_Home.aspx); and

• Licenses of Simio Packages, sponsored by Simio (http://www.simio.com).

This initiative was newly introduced by the EWG-DSS in 2013. It does not compete with the EWG-DSS Yearly Award, since it happens within each of our organized events. In 2013 it counted with the cooperation of he above listed sponsor-companies and distributed licenses of simulation and DSS-area-related software packages as prizes for best presented papers.

More details about the winners of

those prizes in the EURO Mini-Conference Graz-2013 can be read here: http://eurominiconferencegraz2013.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/best-papers-prize-winners/)ss.com/

Upcoming Events GDN-2014 on “Group Decision Making and Web 3.0”

Joint International Conference of the EURO Working Group on DSS and the INFORMS GDN Section Toulouse, June 10th-13th 2014 http://www.irit.fr/gdn2014/

Group decision and negotiation focuses on complex and self-organizing processes that constitute multiparticipant, multicriteria, ill-structured, dynamic, and often evolutionary problems. Major approaches include: (1) applied game theory, experiment and social choice, (2) cognitive and behavioral sciences as applied to group decision and negotiation, (3) conflict analysis and resolution (4) software, specifically group decision support systems (GDSS), negotiation support systems (GDNSS) and more generally decision support systems (DSS), (5) artificial intelligence, and (6) management science as related to group decision-making. Many research initiatives combine two or more of these fields. Examples of Themes and Areas of Interest for the GDN-2014: Technological Foundations: • Distributed GDN Technologies • Virtual Worlds and

Environments for GDN • Artificial Intelligence (AI) • Methods in GDN • Multi-Agent Systems • E-negotiation Systems Methodological & Theoretical Foundations: • CATNAPS: Connectedness

And Technology for Negotiation And Problem Solving

• Game Theory • Social Choice Theory • Bargaining Theory • Collaboration Engineering • Multi-Criteria Decision Making • Conflict Analysis and

Resolution • Design Approaches for

Collaboration and Negotiation Systems

Social and Behavioral Aspects of Group Decision & Negotiation: • Cross-Cultural and

International Group Decisions and Negotiations

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• Impact, Adoption and Evaluation of GDN Technologies and Approaches

• Language in GDN • Emotion in GDN • Creativity in GDN • Family conflict resolution • Facilitation • Cognitive Psychology and

Neuroscience • Participatory decision-making

in communities • E-Democracy

Applications of Group Decision & Negotiation: • Environment- Business • Policy • Diplomacy and International

Relationship • Education and Training • Water and Natural Resources • Sustainability Submissions are to be made on line: http://www.irit.fr/gdn2014 . Important Dates: • Submissions of full papers:

December 9th, 2013 • Notification of Acceptance of

full papers: January 10th, 2014

• Revisions of full accepted papers: February 10th, 2014

• Submissions of late full papers, short papers and posters: February 10th, 2014

• Doctoral Consortium: June 10th, 2014

• Conference: June 11th-13th,2014

IFORS-2014 EWG-DSS Stream on “Decision Support Systems”

EWG-DSS - DSS Stream within the IFORS-2014 Conference. Barcelona, Spain July 2014. www.ifors2014.org

The 20th Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies – IFORS-2014 with the special subject on “The Art of Modeling” will take place in Barcelona, Spain from July 13th to 18th, 2014. The Programme and Organising Committee are preparing a high quality scientific programme of the Conference. More details about the Conference and the venue can be found in the Conference Homepage: www.ifors2014.org. The DSS Stream’s is composed of 5 sessions. These sessions define the main topics of interest in this stream. In order to submit your abstract to one of the DSS Sessions listed below, you need to login in the conference site, select “Abstract Submission” and “Submit an Abstract” and then enter the session’s code (see below) to which you wish to place your submission. The DSS Stream Session codes are given below: • Applications in Decision

Making & Decision Analysis (Code: 3050b044)

• Knowledge Management & Decision Systems (Code: c10e2321)

• DSS supported by Simulation and Optimization Approaches (Code: 969e80ea)

• Collaborative Decision Making (Social Networks & Web Resources) (Code: c56a6943)

• Business Intelligence and Knowledge-Based Decision Support (Code: 490f3dd8)

Deadline for Abstracts: January 31st, 2014 Call for Papers: http://ewgdss.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/cfp-dss-stream-ifors2014-barcelona.pdf

EWG-DSS Collab-Net Project

The the EWG-DSS Collaboration Academic Social Network Project (Collab-Net) targets mainly to disseminate research being conducted by members of the group. A social structure for the group, using the group

members as its defined population, was developed and a social academic network analysis for identifying the collaboration relationship that exits among the EWG-DSS members was devised. The outcome of this project provides the group members useful feedback for further collaboration in joint research and encourages new research and academic cooperation within the group.

For developing the EWG-DSS Collab-Net project further, apart from the EWG-DSS board team, we currently count with development support of researchers from the University of Macedonia in Greece, under the supervision of Jason Papathanasiou; the University of Namur in Belgium, under the supervision of Isabelle Linden; and from the University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil, under the supervision of Adiel Almeida and Ana Paula Costa. We are very grateful to all the involved persons in this project cooperation.

More details about the Collab-Net Project can be read in the link below and in the papers published about it, listed in the Publications of the EWG-DSS group. Link: http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/ewg-dss-net/ .

EWG-DSS Survey In order to support the data

acquisition and data update of the EWG-DSS Collab-Net Project, a survey was elaborated.

All EWG-DSS members and

collaborators are invited to participate in the EWG-DSS survey, so that we can gather some feedback about the quality of the research initiatives organized by the EWG-DSS group, as well as collect some more updated information about the members’ areas of research. Link:

http://surveys.questionpro.com/a/t/AKh6OZQWSw

QR Code: EWG-DSS Survey

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The EWG-DSS survey will also help the group to improve its overall activities and to better search for adequate reviewers, whenever necessary, for the frequent EWG-DSS publication editions.

Your participation in this study is very important, but completely voluntary. There are no foreseeable risks associated with this project. Thank you very much for your time and support!

Other Announcements

Call for Papers IJDSS Special Issue on “Advances in Decision Making with Business Process Management” Guest Editors: Pavlos Delias, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace Institute of Technology, Greece Kostas Vergidis, University of Macedonia, Greece

Deadline for full paper submission: 15 January, 2014 Info: http://www.inderscience.com/info/ingeneral/cfp.php?id=2369

Conferences DSS 2.0

The 16th IFIP WG8.3 DSS Conference 2014 in Paris

The 16th DSS conference will be held on 2-5 June 2014 in Paris, France. The call for papers is announced at the website: http://www.dssconference.org/ Joint International Conference on Management and Society to be held in Plymouth, UK between 2nd and 4th July 2014

This joint international event will

bring together three international conferences (ICSMR 2014; ICFME 2014 and ICSHH 2014) previously held separately.

The call for papers is announced at the relevant websites: www.icsmr.org; www.icfme.org; and www.icshh.org.

ICSMR 2014

The 4th International Conference on Strategic Management and Research Conference Homepage: www.icsmr.org ICFME 2014

The 4th International Conference on Financial Management and Economics Conference Homepage: www.icfme.org ICSHH 2014

The 3rd International Conference on Society, Humanity and History Conference Homepage: www.icshh.org Call for participations and further information about this joint international conference can be obtained in the websites above.

News about Members Georg Cantor Award 2013

João Clímaco received "The Georg Cantor Award"

Prof. João Clímaco, Full Professor of the University of Coimbra, received "The Georg Cantor Award" from the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, in the 22nd International Conference on Multiple Criteria Decision Making, 17-21 June 2013, Málaga, Spain. "The Georg Cantor Award" is a "highest form of recognition that the International Society on Multiple Criteria Decision Making bestows upon a researcher who, over his/her distinguished career, has personified the spirit of independent inquiry and whose many innovative ideas and achievements are decidedly reflected in the theory, methodology, and current practices of MCDM". Congratulations!

EWG-DSS Founding Members meet in 2013 Thessaloniki, May 2013

Jorge Freire de Souza, Fátima Dargam, Pascale Zaraté, Rita Ribeiro and Alexis Tsoukiás.

The EWG-DSS 2013 Workshop in Thessaloniki joined more than 40 researchers in the University of Macedonia. Among them there were five founding members of the group, who first met in the EURO Summer Institute in Madeira in 1989. Namely: Alexis Tsoukiás, Fátima Dargam, Jorge Freire de Souza, Rita Ribeiro and Pascale Zaraté (see picture). It was great for them to meet again and to enjoy the workshop together!

Lisbon, November 2013

Ana Luísa Respício, António Rodrigues, Fátima Dargam and Rita Ribeiro.

Last November, the EWG-DSS founding members António Rodrigues, Rita Ribeiro and Fátima Dargam had the pleasure of meeting in Lisbon, during a business trip of the Fátima in Portugal, and together with our long-term EWG-DSS member Ana Luisa Respício they have enjoyed a delicious Portuguese typical dinner in the old city part of Lisbon (See picture). Delicious!

The EWG-DSS is grateful to all group members who sent contributions to this Newsletter!