Abstract:
Decision support systems (DSS) are typically built for efficiency but fail to address adaptability in support for decision makers. They provide insufficient resources and inadequate support for decision makers to manage the process of complex decision making. Their ability to adapt to changes in user requirements and to provide support for the evolution of DSS is typically constrained. The above situation worsens when resources are distributed at different locations across organisations; decision making processes are required to be integrated at different points in time; and when collaboration is needed among decision makers. To address these problems we propose an adaptive decision making process. We leverage the power of component independence and modelling concepts for designing a DSS framework to support this process. We develop an adaptive distributed DSS architecture to realise the proposed framework with object-oriented and agent paradigms. The architecture is refined and validated with a prototype.