DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS
There is a substantial amount of empirical evidence that human intuitive judgment and decision-making can be far from optimal, and it deteriorates even further with complexity and stress.
Because in many situations the quality of decisions is important, aiding the deficiencies of human judgment and decision-making has been a major focus of science throughout history. Disciplines such as statistics, economics and operations research developed various methods for making rational choices.
More recently, these methods, often enhanced by a variety of techniques originating from information science, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence, have been implemented in the form of computer programs. Such environments are often given the common name of decision support systems (DSSs).
DSS are interactive computer-based systems that aid users in judgment and choice activities.
They are especially valuable in situations in which the amount of available information is prohibitive for the intuition of an unaided human decision maker and in which precision and optimality are of importance.
Decision support systems can aid human cognitive deficiencies by integrating various sources of information, providing intelligent access to relevant knowledge and aiding the process of structuring decisions.
They can also employ artificial intelligence methods to address heuristically problems that are intractable by formal techniques.
Proper application of decision-making tools increases productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, allowing them to make optimal choices for technological processes and their parameters, planning business operations, logistics, or investments.