Most companies relying on an Information Technology (IT) system for their daily operations heavily invest in its maintenance. Tools that monitor network traffic, record anomalies and keep track of the changes that occur in the system are usually used. Root cause analysis and change impact analysis are two main activities involved in the management of IT systems. Currently, there exists no universal model to guide analysts while performing these activities. Although the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a guide to the or- ganization and structure of the tools and processes used to manage IT systems, it does not provide any models that can be used to implement the required features. This thesis focuses on providing simple and effective models and processes for root cause analysis and change impact analysis through mining useful artifacts stored in a Confguration Management Database (CMDB). The CMDB contains information about the different components in a system, called Confguration Items (CIs), as well as the relationships between them. Change reports and incident reports are also stored in a CMDB. The result of our work is the Decision support for Root cause Analysis and Change impact Analysis (DRACA) framework which suggests possible root cause(s) of a problem, as well as possible CIs involved in a change set based on di erent proposed models. The contributions of this thesis are as follows: - An exploration of data repositories (CMDBs) that have not been previously attempted in the mining software repositories research community. - A causality model providing decision support for root cause analysis based on this mined data. - A process for mining historical change information to suggest CIs for future change sets based on a ranking model. Support and con dence measures are used to make the suggestions. - Empirical results from applying the proposed change impact analysis process to industrial data. Our results show that the change sets in the CMDB were highly predictive, and that with a confidence threshold of 80% and a half life of 12 months, an overall recall of 69.8% and a precision of 88.5% were achieved. - An overview of lessons learned from using a CMDB, and the observations we made while working with the CMDB.

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New or improved decision analysis tools are developed in this thesis to address strategic policy analysis with specific focus on two topics: strategic conflict analysis and region-performance comparisons. A strategic conflict refers to a situation in which two or more decision makers (DMs) are to make a decision that affects issues over which they have different preferences. Various forms of strategic conflict exist all around us, in areas such as environmental management, international relations, economic competition, and relationships among individuals. The graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) is an advanced and comprehensive tool to systematically study strategic conflicts. A well-known decision tool, the analytic network process (ANP) is adapted for use in strategic conflict analysis and a comparison of the performance of ANP with GMCR is carried out. Both methods are applied to an international trading conflict between the United States and China over the importation of television sets into the US in order to gain strategic insights about this dispute using the two different but complementary approaches. A country's overall performance comparison with respect to different kinds of indices such as economic, environmental and political indices constitutes another interesting topic for strategic policy analysis. An index aggregation approach is proposed to compare BRICSAM countries, a populous rapidly-growing economic group of nations consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations), and Mexico with G7 (Group of Seven), the most developed country club including Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States. A data-envelopment-analysis (DEA) based approach is proposed to aggregate different ranking indices for BRICSAM and the G7 countries. The proposed method can provide a fair overall assessment of a country's standing by maximizing its possibility of obtaining the best evaluation score. Finally, a framework to carry out generic strategic analysis for regions' competence analysis is designed based upon the theory of generic strategic analysis proposed by Porter (1980). This is a well-known approach for use in business competence analysis. The basic idea is to carry out generic strategic analysis in policy studies and two decision tools, DEA and the analytic hierarchy process, are employed to quantify the analysis of competence efficiency and potentiality, respectively. A case study of the competence analysis of provinces in China is used to demonstrate the analysis procedure.

Most companies relying on an Information Technology (IT) system for their daily operations heavily invest in its maintenance. Tools that monitor network traffic, record anomalies and keep track of the changes that occur in the system are usually used. Root cause analysis and change impact analysis are two main activities involved in the management of IT systems. Currently, there exists no universal model to guide analysts while performing these activities. Although the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a guide to the or- ganization and structure of the tools and processes used to manage IT systems, it does not provide any models that can be used to implement the required features. This thesis focuses on providing simple and effective models and processes for root cause analysis and change impact analysis through mining useful artifacts stored in a Confguration Management Database (CMDB). The CMDB contains information about the different components in a system, called Confguration Items (CIs), as well as the relationships between them. Change reports and incident reports are also stored in a CMDB. The result of our work is the Decision support for Root cause Analysis and Change impact Analysis (DRACA) framework which suggests possible root cause(s) of a problem, as well as possible CIs involved in a change set based on di erent proposed models. The contributions of this thesis are as follows: - An exploration of data repositories (CMDBs) that have not been previously attempted in the mining software repositories research community. - A causality model providing decision support for root cause analysis based on this mined data. - A process for mining historical change information to suggest CIs for future change sets based on a ranking model. Support and con dence measures are used to make the suggestions. - Empirical results from applying the proposed change impact analysis process to industrial data. Our results show that the change sets in the CMDB were highly predictive, and that with a confidence threshold of 80% and a half life of 12 months, an overall recall of 69.8% and a precision of 88.5% were achieved. - An overview of lessons learned from using a CMDB, and the observations we made while working with the CMDB.

When working on United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design LEED projects, architects, designers, and engineers involved in a sustainable design project often require information and tools beyond energy simulation software. They may require resources (tools) to support their decisions and to assess the risk involved in decision making. This research has presented a framework that links building performance assessment tools with the LEED rating system. It aims at bridging a gap between Architects, engineers, contractors, facility managers and LEED professionals. This work provides information about performance tools that can be used for different phases during design, construction and operation of a LEED rated building. A simple logic of the transitive property of equality i.e. if a = b, b = c then a = c was used to link the LEED credits requiring decision support with the tools that have capabilities to achieve it. This research presents a 3-dimensional matrix of "Right tool for right job at right time" by linking LEED credits, software tools and phases of building design, construction and operation. Overall the findings of the research demonstrated that the framework developed can be used for achieving 21 percent of total possible LEED 3.0 credits by providing about 36 percent of total possible points.

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Knowledge management is an important weapon for business competition. Many organizations are adopting knowledge management systems. For knowledge management, document management is its key foundation. There is a large amount of procedural knowledge existing in decision documents. This knowledge can illustrate the process and considerations in a decision situation, called episodic. The episodic knowledge can help decision makers understand historical decision process and considerations for future decision making. Therefore, how to discover decision episodes from existing documents is a major research issue in knowledge management. This research proposes a method for episode mining that integrates automatic document summary techniques, knowledge ontology, and index structures to build the relations and processes of events, and use the Gantt Chart and Flow Chart to portray event processes. We build a prototype system and use a news event as our example to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed approach and demonstrate the results.

With the performance enhancement of personal computers and the popularity of Microsoft Windowing Geographic Information System (GIS), it is becoming more viable in performing the distribution automated mapping and facility management (AM/FM). In this thesis, the relative structure of the graphic and attribute data of the distribution system with four feeders (LB33, LB34, LB35 and LB38) of the Taiwan Power Company (TPC) were built according to the true geography, referring to the street background. The related applications of the GIS included Distribution Information System (DIS) and Feeder Management Decision Support (FMDS) system by using MS Visual Basic object oriented programming. The proposed DIS links graphic objects and facility attribute data through the DDE connect and WinGIS Software, and provides a user-friendly Man-Machine Interface to manage the distribution database. As for FMDS, it is complicated to operate with colossal system information of the distribution systems. To enhance the operational efficiency and reduce cost, a fast and effective Feeder Management Decision Support is critical. With a user-friendly graphical user interface provided by mapping, effective database interface and related distribution system management algorithms, it is capable of providing the decision support, so a good decision can be made both normal and emergency conditions: 1. Decision support under the normal operation The decision system can reduce the line loss and maintain bus voltages with load transferal through feeder reconfiguration strategy. 2. Decision support under the emergency operation With fuzzy reasoning algorithm, security analysis will examine network security and an optimal switching strategy can solve the load recovery problem fast and effectively.

System Dynamics Model follow the procedure for ¡§data collecting ¡÷ model design ¡÷ analysis ¡÷ modification¡¨ to analyze problems on a project by project base; however, this process is just a principle report and it cannot directly and continuously affect business decision. Furthermore, after the completion of each project, data often is locked in the file room and cannot be reused. If simulation tools of System Dynamics allow user to connect the dynamics data source from the enterprise, potential benefits will be: 1. After analysis, with business data, model can be simulated time after time. This enable the repeating use of previous investment. 2. Decision makers can simulated condition of the future use the enterprise online data . The main purpose of this research at probe interaction of System Dynamics Model and data source. Under above-mentioned structure. In the phase, we propose to add a ¡§Data Source¡¨ component in traditional structure of the System Dynamics model. The new component will connected model and data source, and keep the independent executed of the model. And in addition to the design of the structure of the model, this research also according to the structure, design physical simulation tools ¡V we call the tool Maria. Maria can provide the function of building and simulating System Dynamics model like the traditional simulate tool, and connect model and dynamic data source. We use a simple model to prove the value of System Dynamics model and data source, and the future prospect of the structure.

In an event of environmental impact assessment (EIA), encouraging public participation is particular important during the process of open deliberation attributed to the following reasons. First, people may contribute vital environment information to support decision making for the authority in charge. Secondly, through the process of participation, not only satisfying the right of "be aware" for people but establishing the consensus toward a feasible alternative in advance. In the past several years, Decision Support Systems (DSS), through the integration of human intelligence and software engineering, has been widely used to solve semi-structure or ill-structure problems. Nevertheless, DDS is designed for single user. In most situations involving many stockholders, a decision may not be made simply by a single person but by a group of people after reaching some agreement. It is therefore important to develop Group Decision Support System (GDSS) to deal with such problems. The current research employs the concept of GDSS and develops the prototype of a GDSS for promoting "public participation" in EIA. Such system fully integrates various techniques to cover "Delphi", "Certainty Factor", and "3D Geographic Information System (GIS)". "Delphi" is used as the mechanism to facilitate the reduction of dissentient view, while "Certainty Factor" offers an easy yet effective approach to evaluate public opinion under a multi-criteria decision making environment. Finally people can visualize the future landscape of all alternatives with the virtual scene generated by 3D GIS. To make the general public aware the EIA related information, the GDSS also takes full advantage of the Internet to deliver message in multimedia form. The case study to demonstrate the usage of such GDSS is the transportation project of building a sightseeing cross-harbor cable car between Mt. qi-hou and Mt. shou. Through using the GDSS by the stockholders, more people are willing to take part in EIA and thus put "public participation" in practice. In consequence, the authority in charge of EIA may make more appropriate decision in light of the results from public participation.