Invitation CHAPTER PROPOSALS ARE INVITED
4 February 2002 Dear Colleagues, We are in the process of editing a book on: Innovations in Decision Support Systems Editors: Tonfoni and Jain Decision support systems facilitate the decision making process for most effective outcome in the many areas including healthcare, business, planning, defence, and so on. We spend a large section of our resources in knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation and knowledge processing for making intelligent decisions. Intelligent reasoning techniques can offer (tremendous) advantages in making optimised decisions. The book is aimed toward clarifying first the very concept of innovation as for what it really means today in a continuously changing set up where technologies require a continuous effort in learning and coping with constant instability and uncertainty. Reflections upon continuously changing conditions on cognitive abilities will also be explored and notions such as "amplification brought in by new technologies" as well as "simplified models of reasoning triggering oversimplistic reasoning patterns" will also be carefully analised. Specific attention will be paid as to redefine the meaning of the same title: the very same concept of support in making decisions needs in fact to be fully reconsidered in the light of a few cases examined. The fundamental role of complex reasoning performed by human decision makers in need to grasp most relevant information fast and accurately will also be illustrated. The proposals in all relevant topics are invited. This book will contain chapters, which are based on the theory and successful applications of decision support systems including but not limited to: * An introduction to decision support systems * Decision support systems in health care * Decision support systems in telemedicine * Decision support systems in traffic control * Decision support systems in defence * Decision support systems in business * Decision support systems in education * Decision support systems in aerospace applications The main idea is not necessarily to cover all of these areas but rather to indicate and discuss how some of the applications illustrated may be reconfigured and made better in the light of results achieved and cased analysed. The message is learning by observing some limits and failures and consequently try coping with that in most constructive ways so that new scenarios may be opened up. Please give special attention to problems such as continuous change or the so called innovation affecting performance and undermining sense of individual responsibility and motivation. Questions such as how does the individual decision maker or team react to packaged and prepackaged advice and does he/she feel really responsible and in control should be also addressed. And who controls what as well as what controls whom questions should be raised. Questions : what is really "innovation"? How about when in order to be innovative we loose previous skills which were very important as well as previous knowledge? What is "support" and how may an information system really be of support to a human decision maker? What is really most important to those making decisions in various fields today? And what is finally "decision making" today in the interconnected world of information workload? Who really decides what and which models of reasoning are becoming predominant indeed? It is planned to include some risks and failures based on specific cases analysis. We will also provide some evidence as for what should be avoided and which are the essential components which should never be left out of any decision making process. Could you please consider writing one chapter for our book? Please feel free to take co-authors. Approximate number of pages in each chapter - 30 Publication date - 2002. Important Dates 4 March 2002 Authors are invited to submit summary (one page) of their proposed chapters as well as their brief resume (CV). 24 March 2002 Acceptance decision. 30 June 2002 Draft chapter due 30 July 2001 Feedback to the authors 30 August 2002 Camera ready chapter due We will be pleased to offer one copy of this book to the first named author/or the corresponding author to express our appreciation. Prof. Dr. Graziella Tonfoni Prof. Dr. Lakhmi Jain Please send your proposals to: Dr. Lakhmi Jain Professor of Knowledge-Based Engineering Director/Founder KES Centre SCT-Building University of South Australia, Adelaide Mawson Lakes, S.A. 5095 Australia E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
