Spatial Decision Support Systems

Although interest in Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) continues to grow rapidly in a wide range of disciplines, students, planners, managers, and the research community have lacked a book that covers the fundamentals of SDSS along with the advanced design concepts required for building SDSS. Filling this need, Spatial Decision Support Systems: Principles and Practices provides a comprehensive examination of the various aspects of SDSS evolution, components, architecture, and implementation. It integrates research from a variety of disciplines, including the geosciences, to supply a complete overview of SDSS technologies and their application from an interdisciplinary perspective. This groundbreaking reference provides thorough coverage of the roots of SDSS. It explains the core principles of SDSS, how to use them in various decision making contexts, and how to design and develop them using readily available enabling technologies and commercial tools. The book consists of four major parts, each addressing different topic areas in SDSS: Presents an introduction to SDSS and the evolution of SDSS Covers the essential and optional components of SDSS Focuses on the design and implementation of SDSS Reviews SDSS applications from various domains and disciplines—investigating current challenges and future directions The text includes numerous detailed case studies, example applications, and methods for tailoring SDSS to your work environment. It also integrates sample code segments throughout. Addressing the technical and organizational challenges that affect the success or failure of SDSS, the book concludes by considering future directions of this rapidly emerging field of study.

The Encyclopedia of GIS provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide, contributed by experts and peer-reviewed for accuracy, and alphabetically arranged for convenient access. The entries explain key software and processes used by geographers and computational scientists. Major overviews are provided for nearly 200 topics: Geoinformatics, Spatial Cognition, and Location-Based Services and more. Shorter entries define specific terms and concepts. The reference will be published as a print volume with abundant black and white art, and simultaneously as an XML online reference with hyperlinked citations, cross-references, four-color art, links to web-based maps, and other interactive features.

In the past half century, we have experienced two major waves of methodological development in the study of human behavior in space and time. The fIrst wave was the well known "quantitative revolution" which propelled geography from a mainly descriptive discipline to a scientifIc discipline using formalism such as probability, statistics, and a large-number of mathematical methods for analyzing spatial structures and processes under certainty and uncertainty. The second wave is the recent advancement of geographical information systems which equips geographers with automation in the storage, retrieval, analysis, and display of data. Both developments have significant impacts on geographical studies in general and solutions to real life spatio-temporal problems in particular. They have found applications in urban and regional planning, automated mapping and facilities management, transportation planning and management, as well as environmental planning and management, to name but a few examples. Both developments have one thing in common. They one way or the other use computer to process and analyze data. However, not until recently, there has been very little interaction between the two. Quantitative models have largely been developed independent of the underlying data models and structures representing the spatial phenomena or processes under study. Display of analysis results has been primitive in terms of the utilization of computer graphic technologies. Formal models, in addition to their technical difficulties, have poor capability in communication with users. Geographical information systems, on the other hand, have originally been developed with a slight intention to entertain powerful analytical models.

In recent years, much work has been done in formulating and clarifying the concept of sustainable development and related theoretical and research issues. Now, the challenge has shifted to designing and stimulating processes of effective planning and decision-making, at all levels of human activity, in such a way as to achieve local and global sustainable development. Information technology can help a great deal in achieving sustainable development by providing well-designed and useful tools for decision makers. One such tool is the decision support system, or DSS. This book explores the area of DSS in the context of sustainable development. As DSS is a very new technique, especially in the developing world, this book will serve as a reference text, primarily for managers, government officials, and information professionals in developing countries. It covers the concept of sustainable development, defines DSS and how it can be used in the planning and management of sustainable development, and examines the state of the art in DSS use. Other interested readers will include students, teachers, and analysts in information sciences; DSS designers, developers, and implementors; and international development agencies.

This book aims to provide a new vision of how algorithms are the core of decision support systems (DSSs), which are increasingly important information systems that help to make decisions related to unstructured and semi-unstructured decision problems that do not have a simple solution from a human point of view. It begins with a discussion of how DSSs will be vital to improving the health of the population. The following article deals with how DSSs can be applied to improve the performance of people doing a specific task, like playing tennis. It continues with a work in which authors apply DSSs to insect pest management, together with an interactive platform for fitting data and carrying out spatial visualization. The next article improves how to reschedule trains whenever disturbances occur, together with an evaluation framework. The final works focus on different relevant areas of DSSs: 1) a comparison of ensemble and dimensionality reduction models based on an entropy criterion; 2) a radar emitter identification method based on semi-supervised and transfer learning; 3) design limitations, errors, and hazards in creating very large-scale DSSs; and 4) efficient rule generation for associative classification. We hope you enjoy all the contents in the book.

Annotation The book presents state-of-the-art knowledge about decision-making support systems (DMSS). Its main goals are to provide a compendium of quality chapters on decision-making support systems that help diffuse scarce knowledge about effective methods and strategies for successfully designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating decision-making support systems, and to create an awareness among readers about the relevance of decision-making support systems in the current complex and dynamic management environment.

Decision support systems (DSS) are widely touted for their effectiveness in aiding decision making, particularly across a wide and diverse range of industries including healthcare, business, and engineering applications. The concepts, principles, and theories of enhanced decision making are essential points of research as well as the exact methods, tools, and technologies being implemented in these industries. From both a standpoint of DSS interfaces, namely the design and development of these technologies, along with the implementations, including experiences and utilization of these tools, one can get a better sense of how exactly DSS has changed the face of decision making and management in multi-industry applications. Furthermore, the evaluation of the impact of these technologies is essential in moving forward in the future. The Research Anthology on Decision Support Systems and Decision Management in Healthcare, Business, and Engineering explores how decision support systems have been developed and implemented across diverse industries through perspectives on the technology, the utilizations of these tools, and from a decision management standpoint. The chapters will cover not only the interfaces, implementations, and functionality of these tools, but also the overall impacts they have had on the specific industries mentioned. This book also evaluates the effectiveness along with benefits and challenges of using DSS as well as the outlook for the future. This book is ideal for decision makers, IT consultants and specialists, software developers, design professionals, academicians, policymakers, researchers, professionals, and students interested in how DSS is being used in different industries.

This book provides an extensive review of three interrelated issues: land fragmentation, land consolidation, and land reallocation, and it presents in detail the theoretical background, design, development and application of a prototype integrated planning and decision support system for land consolidation. The system integrates geographic information systems (GIS) and artificial intelligence techniques including expert systems (ES) and genetic algorithms (GAs) with multi-criteria decision methods (MCDM), both multi-attribute (MADM) and multi-objective (MODM). The system is based on four modules for measuring land fragmentation; automatically generating alternative land redistribution plans; evaluating those plans; and automatically designing the land partitioning plan. The presented research provides a new scientific framework for land-consolidation planning both in terms of theory and practice, by presenting new findings and by developing better tools and methods embedded in an integrated GIS environment. It also makes a valuable contribution to the fields of GIS and spatial planning, as it provides new methods and ideas that could be applied to improve the former for the benefit of the latter in the context of planning support systems. “From the 1960s, ambitious research activities set out to observe regarding IT-support of the complex and time consuming redistribution processes within land consolidation – without any practically relevant results, until now. This scientific work is likely to close that gap. This distinguished publication is highly recommended to land consolidation planning experts, researchers and academics alike.” – Prof. Dr.-Ing. Joachim Thomas, Münster/ Germany "Planning support systems take new scientific tools based on GIS, optimisation and simulation and use these to inform the process of plan-making and policy. This book is one of the first to show how this can be consistently done and it is a triumph of demonstrating how such systems can be made operational. Essential reading for planners, analysts and GI scientists." – Prof. Michael Batty, University College London