The Methodology of Decision Analysis project deals with formal methods that
help to prepare and support decisionmaking. This area of concern is becoming
more important for two main reasons. First, because all net effects of
prospective decisions need to be evaluated and second, the decisionmaking
processes themselves are becoming more complex because of the involvement of
numerous parties and interests. A more precise and detailed evaluation and
analysis of the effects of prospective decisions needs to be made. Methods also
have to be developed to support the selection of decisions. Recent progress in
computation and information technology make it indeed possible to implement
intelligent methods of decision support. There are several paradigms for intelligent decision support; for instance,
the mathematical approach, the rule-based approach and the black box approach.
However, it is not at all clear which paradigm should be used in which
situation. In fact, experience indicates that quite often a combination of
approaches is preferable. The research focus of the project is to investigate
when and how which approach should be used. For each of the possible approaches, fundamental research is being done in
many research institutes all over the world. One aim of this project is to
build a bridge between that fundamental research and IIASA's areas of
application. This bridge should have twoway traffic: i.e., that theoretical
and methodological work be done in an environment where many of the real
problems are identified, and that IIASA have this type of in-house expertise
available. The Council's Evaluation Committee for methodological projects in 1995 gave
an overall positive evaluation of the research activities in recent years. The
Committee also raised important questions and suggested broadening the research
scope of the project. IIASA is pursuing these suggestions by issuing a call for
proposals aimed at reshaping the project in order to continue the activities
needed for the on-going collaboration with other IIASA projects, and to start
new research activities in the field of Decision Analysis and Support. The main objective of the project is to acquire the knowledge, methodology
and tools for developing decision analysis support methods for classes of
research problems within IIASA's areas of interest. Typical, problem classes
would be those of land use and land cover change, tropospheric ozone, acid rain,
pollution in river basins and environmental consequences of energy use. In 1996, the central part of the project's activities will continue to be
the acquisition of knowledge, methodology and tools for developing decision
analytic and support methods for particular problems within IIASA's areas of
interest. The approach of the project is to develop formal methods of analysis
and evaluation: the activities, therefore, are more of a mathematical than of a
computing science nature. Presently the project collaborates with several other
IIASA projects on various case studies, and ongoing research in this area will
be continued with some extensions. The case studies will also be used for
testing both the methodology and tools. Research of decision support methodology in the area of land use policies
will be continued and extended. Good results were obtained with an optimization
method based on interior point methods and with using Multiple Criteria Model
Analysis methods to the problem of Agroecological Zones. In 1996, the aim is to
continue the development of a decision support methodology and problem specific
tools for a larger class of land use problems for the Modeling Land-Use and
Land-Cover Changes Project. In collaboration with the Transboundary Air Pollution Project, extensions to
the existing methods will be developed for the new versions of the RAINS model
for Europe and for the RAINS model for Asia. In 1995 an activity was started to
develop modeling tools for analysis of the Ozone model (which is a large scale
nonlinear programming problem). This collaboration will continue in 1996 and
include further development and application of tools for the generation and
analysis of medium and large scale optimization models, both for linear and
nonlinear problems. The methodology for supporting decisions regarding water quality in river
basins developed and applied in the last three years, and the experience gained
in joint research with the Water Resources Project on the Nitra case study, will
be extended and applied to similar case studies, if undertaken by the Water
Resources Project in the future. Continuation of another joint activity begun in
1995 on modeling approaches for multicriteria reservoir management should be
completed in mid-1996. The activities of the Environmentally Compatible Energy Strategies Project
involves using large scale, LP optimization models. The HOPDM (interior point
method based LP solver) is being successfully applied to these optimization
problems. This provides an opportunity for extending the collaboration to joint
research on formulation and solution techniques for the corresponding class of
optimization models. For all the above mentioned activities, the modeling process should be
improved. Therefore, the introduction of new modeling tools in these areas will
be investigated based on the progress that has been made in recent years with
automatic modeling aids for optimization problems. In this regard, the improved
multicriteria optimization procedures and modular solvers for different types of
optimization problems developed in long-term collaboration with a group of
researchers in Poland and with the IIASA projects, will be summarized in 1996 in
a book and several modular software packages. Additional collaboration was initiated in 1995 to model imprecision by fuzzy
logic and to apply knowledge representation techniques to support the modeling
process. These activities will be further explored in 1996 in connection with
the Land-Use Model, Ozone Model and River Basin Model that include multiple
fuzzy goals and fuzzy constraints and to apply fuzzy multicriteria
decisionmaking techniques to solve them. As this is an untested approach, an
assessment of its usefulness will be made in early 1996. In collaboration with the National Institute for Environmental Studies
(NIES) in Japan and with the Modeling Land-Use and Land-Cover Changes in Europe
and Northern Asia Project at IIASA, work is proceeding on the development of a
computer simulation model to estimate impacts of climate change by the
greenhouse effect on agricultural production and arable land-use, and the use of
this model to predict these impacts in the Asia-Pacific region. The model
development work will contribute to the development of a land-use and land cover
change model and will also further the Asia-Pacific Integrated Model (AIM),
developed by NIES, for evaluating policy options to stabilize global climate.
This research, to be carried out in 1996, comprises the following components:
The following activities will also be continued in 1996: Additional activities of this type are the investigation of modeling and
problem specification tools for global environmental problems, the integration
of algorithmic and rulebased approaches for such problems, the integration of
black-box approaches (like via neural nets) and rule-based approaches. These
activities will be partly included in the cooperation with NIES. In 1996, the yearly workshop on Advances of Methodology and Software for
Decision Support will again be organized in cooperation with Professor Y.
Sawaragi, Chairman of the Japan Institute of Systems Research. Apart from this
formal workshop, two informal workshops will be organized to summarize results
of activities that will be finished this year. The first one aims at
summarizing, discussing and dispersing the results, tools and methods for
supporting decisions around environmental problems that have been developed in
the last five years in strong cooperation with other IIASA projects and with a
group of Polish institutions coordinated by Professor A. Wierzbicki. The second
one aims at summarizing the results of a joint study with a group from Vienna
Economic University on the potential of neurocomputing for analyzing remote
sensing data. This study was supported by the Austrian Ministry for Science,
Research and Arts. Another aim of this latter workshop is to plan other joint
activities in the same area and present them to potential sponsors. Selected, primarily methodological, results will be submitted to refereed
journals. Other results will be published as IIASA Working Papers. Preparation
of an edited volume on methodology, software and applications of Decision
Support Systems which summarizes the last few years of research will be
completed in 1996. The preparation of a book on "Applications of Fuzzy
Logic to Environmental Research Problems" with Kluwer is also planned in
1996. The study on the application of artificial neural nets to the analysis of
satellite data will also be documented. Several existing pilot implementations of modular software packages will be
enhanced. This includes: Currently the Project Leader is Jaap Wessels (on a part-time basis), and the
research team includes Marek Makowski, Hans-Jürgen Sebastian, Kazuhiko
Takemoto, Hiroyuki Tamura and Andrzej Wierzbicki. All members of the MDA
project except Marek Makowski are on a part-time basis. Intensive collaboration will be continued with the following: Manfred M.
Fischer, Petra Staufer, Vienna University of Economics and Business
Administration, Austria; Birger Funke and Stefanie Geuhs, Aachen University of
Technology, Aachen, Germany; Jacek Gondzio and Janusz Sosnowski, Systems
Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw; Janusz Granat and Piotr
Zawicki, Institute of Automatic Control, Warsaw University of Technology,
Poland; Marc Haines, University of Koblenz, Germany; Mikiko Kainuma and
Tsuneyuki Morita, National Institute of Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan;
Yuzuru Matsuoka, Nagoya University, Japan; Yoshiteru Nakamori and Hirotaka
Nakayama, Konan University, Kobe, Japan; Wlodzimierz Ogryczak, University of
Warsaw, Poland; Gerrit J. van Oortmarssen, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the
Netherlands; Yoshikazu Sawaragi, The Japan Institute of Systems Research,
Kyoto; Antonio Pedro Duarte Silva, School of the Porto Regional Center,
Catholic University of Portugal; and Antonie Stam, University of Georgia,
Athens, USA.
Abstract
The project explores, develops and implements methods of decision support
for the applied research problem areas in which IIASA is active. The emphasis of
the project is on formal methods of analysis and evaluation: the activities,
therefore, are more of a mathematical than of a computing science nature. In the
last few years, the work of the project has become increasingly related to other
IIASA activities, particularly in the environmental area. Continuation of
activities that have proved to be useful at IIASA is planned for 1996. A
broadening of the research scope of the project is planned, mainly following the
suggestions formulated in May 1995 by the Council's Evaluation Committee for the
methodological projects.
Introduction
Objectives
Approach and Activities
Expected Results and Applications
Personnel and Collaboration