Springer Handbook on Decision Making: Vol 1: Techniques and Applications: 4 (Intelligent Systems Reference Library, 4)

Decision making arises when we wish to select the best possible course of action from a set of alternatives. With advancements of the digital technologies, it is easy, and almost instantaneous, to gather a large volume of information and/or data pertaining to a problem that we want to solve. For instance, the world-wi- web is perhaps the primary source of information and/or data that we often turn to when we face a decision making problem. However, the information and/or data that we obtain from the real world often are complex, and comprise various kinds of noise. Besides, real-world information and/or data often are incomplete and ambiguous, owing to uncertainties of the environments. All these make decision making a challenging task. To cope with the challenges of decision making, - searchers have designed and developed a variety of decision support systems to provide assistance in human decision making processes. The main aim of this book is to provide a small collection of techniques stemmed from artificial intelligence, as well as other complementary methodo- gies, that are useful for the design and development of intelligent decision support systems. Application examples of how these intelligent decision support systems can be utilized to help tackle a variety of real-world problems in different - mains, e. g. business, management, manufacturing, transportation and food ind- tries, and biomedicine, are also presented. A total of twenty chapters, which can be broadly divided into two parts, i. e. From the Back Cover Decision making is a multi-faceted and challenging, yet important task. A decision maker normally has to take into consideration a number of alternatives, which often conflict with one another, before reaching a good decision. To cope with the challenges of decision making, decision support systems have been developed to provide assistance in human decision making processes. The key to decision support systems is to collect information/data, analyse the information/data collected, and subsequently make quality and informed decisions. In this aspect, intelligent reasoning and learning techniques have emerged as a powerful approach to solving real-world decision making problems. The main aim of this research handbook is to present a small fraction of techniques stemmed from artificial intelligence, as well as other complementary methodologies, that are useful for developing intelligent decision support systems. In addition, application examples on how the intelligent decision support systems can be deployed to undertake decision making problems in a variety of domains are presented. Among the topics covered in this book include • modelling and design of intelligent decision support systems • artificial neural networks, genetic algorithm, and fuzzy systems for intelligent decision making • case based reasoning and agent-based systems for intelligent decision making • application of intelligent decision support systems to business, management, manufacturing, engineering, biomedicine, transportation and food industries.