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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.

TEAMDEC is a Group Decision Support System (GDSS). The development of a GDSS is supported by a broad spectrum of theories and techniques. Two major aspects of GDSS development were considered in TEAMDEC design: HCI and decision-making assistance. These two aspects interact to promote an interactive group decision support system with high quality. Decision guidance using a script-based knowledge representation improves the GDSS's efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility. The traditional script, however, is relatively inflexible. The proposed application, TEAMDEC, provides a set of solutions to support customization in a script system to enhance the decision guidance utilization. The user interface design plays an important role in the overall system design. Two software development models (lifecycle model and V-model with backtracking) are adopted for TEAMDEC development. The user interface design of TEAMDEC is considered from three perspectives: functional, aesthetic, and structural. Quality is emphasized in the development of the interactive system. It can be measured from two perspectives: those of the user and the designer. The quality measures of TEAMDEC are categorized into external properties and internal properties, corresponding to the two perspectives. / Master of Science

In group decision support systems, understanding the roles, dynamics and relationships between participants is imperative to streamlining the decision-making process. This is especially true when decision makers have varying interests. Research has shown that decision-making processes amongst groups with varying interests will often reach bottlenecks with issues, such as unwillingness to share information, or a limited ability of the participants to share ideas at the same time. We explored this research territory of group decision-making by implementing collaboration software to support Ocean Summits, a new approach that uses real-time simulations as part of the decision-making process for stakeholders to explore fisheries management policies. The research reported in this thesis has three goals: (1) to better understand the decision-making process in fisheries management, (2) to build a prototype system to tackle the major issues in the decision-making process and (3) to determine the best way to share and display information critical to the stakeholders' decision-making process by exploring the use of shared screens and information in comparison to private displays. We discovered that the use of shared screens with shared information yielded the best results, as opposed to private screens with shared information or private screens with private information. It was observed that sharing information allowed participants to explore more alternative solutions.

In group decision support systems, understanding the roles, dynamics and relationships between participants is imperative to streamlining the decision-making process. This is especially true when decision makers have varying interests. Research has shown that decision-making processes amongst groups with varying interests will often reach bottlenecks with issues, such as unwillingness to share information, or a limited ability of the participants to share ideas at the same time. We explored this research territory of group decision-making by implementing collaboration software to support Ocean Summits, a new approach that uses real-time simulations as part of the decision-making process for stakeholders to explore fisheries management policies. The research reported in this thesis has three goals: (1) to better understand the decision-making process in fisheries management, (2) to build a prototype system to tackle the major issues in the decision-making process and (3) to determine the best way to share and display information critical to the stakeholders' decision-making process by exploring the use of shared screens and information in comparison to private displays. We discovered that the use of shared screens with shared information yielded the best results, as opposed to private screens with shared information or private screens with private information. It was observed that sharing information allowed participants to explore more alternative solutions.

In group decision support systems, understanding the roles, dynamics and relationships between participants is imperative to streamlining the decision-making process. This is especially true when decision makers have varying interests. Research has shown that decision-making processes amongst groups with varying interests will often reach bottlenecks with issues, such as unwillingness to share information, or a limited ability of the participants to share ideas at the same time. We explored this research territory of group decision-making by implementing collaboration software to support Ocean Summits, a new approach that uses real-time simulations as part of the decision-making process for stakeholders to explore fisheries management policies. The research reported in this thesis has three goals: (1) to better understand the decision-making process in fisheries management, (2) to build a prototype system to tackle the major issues in the decision-making process and (3) to determine the best way to share and display information critical to the stakeholders' decision-making process by exploring the use of shared screens and information in comparison to private displays. We discovered that the use of shared screens with shared information yielded the best results, as opposed to private screens with shared information or private screens with private information. It was observed that sharing information allowed participants to explore more alternative solutions. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate

This research compared the use of an electronic meeting system tool to a manual group process in large and small groups in a controlled laboratory experiment. Outcomes measured include the quality of decision, the time taken in various stages of the decision making process, and group member satisfaction. A research model of the variables influencing group decision making was developed. The six independent variables included in this model are group size, the rule by which the group makes a decision, the incentives driving the group, the distribution of useful information within the group, the task complexity, and the meeting support (electronic or manual). In this research group size and method of support were manipulated, while the other variables were controlled. A decision-making task was developed for this research to specify and manipulate the six independent variables. The task described a product mix problem in which information on each product was given to group members. The group shared information and jointly determined an outcome. The group used an unanimous decision rule to choose a solution. A numerical outcome was used to objectively measure decision quality. Each member of the group received a cash payoff determined by the group's solution as incentive in accomplishing the task. All groups found the optimal solution. The simplicity of the task may have minimized the differences found between groups. There was no significant difference in general member satisfaction or time to decision. Prior knowledge was found to influence general member satisfaction and the time needed for the group to share information. Members of large groups perceived more uneven distribution of participation than members of small groups. Voting differences were very large: large groups took significantly more votes than small groups, and electronic groups took significantly more votes than manual groups. "Conjunctive" and "disjunctive" task descriptions are used to discuss task/tool interaction.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The goal of this study is to provide a single source of data that enables the selection of an appropriate voice recognition (VR) application for a decision support system (DSS) as well as for other computer applications. A brief background of both voice recognition systems and decision supports systems is provided with special emphasis given to the dialog component of DSS. The categories of voice recognition discussed are human factors, environmental factors, situational factors, quantitative factors, training factors, host computer factors, and experiments and research. Each of these areas of voice recognition is individually analyzed, and specific references to applicable literature are included. This study also includes appendices that contain: a glossary (including definitions) of phrases specific to both decision support system and voice recognition systems, keywords applicable to this study, an annotated bibliography (alphabetically and by specific topics) of current VR systems literature containing over 200 references, an index of publishers, a complete listing of current commercially available VR systems. / http://archive.org/details/applicationofvoi00drak / Lieutenant, United States Navy

This research was concerned with the collection of empirical data necessary to estimate the effects of decision support tools on the performance of distributed groups. Data was collected in a controlled experimental environment that simulated a geographically-dispersed meeting through the use of videoconferencing and group communication support (GCSS) technology. Results of the use of a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) on group process and outcome variables were mixed. As predicted by the literature the use of a GDSS by distributed groups improved overall group consensus, decision accuracy, and decision effectiveness. The use of a GDSS also increased perceived process structure. Contrary to previous studies, the use of a GDSS increased decision time, and decreased overall satisfaction with the group process. No significant effects were found for perceived consensus, cooperation, amount of information exchange, or confidence in the decision. A strong correlation was found between decision quality and decision time. An even stronger correlation was found between perceived structure of the process and satisfaction with the process. The lack of feedback about the process and its outcomes could explain the lack of a GDSS effect on perceptions of consensus, cooperation, and confidence in the decision. Perception of subjective measures of the process may depend on the presence of the appropriate types of feedback. The results suggest that an increase in structure without a perceived improvement in decision quality (confidence in the decision) tends to reduce group satisfaction. A richer taxonomy for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems is proposed whereby three orthogonal dimensions of group support are defined. These three dimensions of group support are: Communication support, decision support, and presence support. This new taxonomy suggests a number of research directions aimed at the empirical identification of contextual and design factors relevant to distributed group performance and decision making performance in general. / Master of Science

In the automotive industry, assembly lines are used to produce vehicles. These assembly lines improve throughput, and need to be carefully planned. Planning, or balancing, an assembly line constitutes identifying precedence relationships between tasks in the assembly line, and assigning tasks to stations to fit some criteria. This procedure is costly to do by hand, and is well-suited for some level of automation. The problem of balancing assembly lines has been researched since the 1950’s, but modern assembly lines largely rely on engineers to balance the line by hand. This thesis proposes that the work flow of engineers planning the assembly line would be improved by a group decision support system. This group decision support system could supply engineers with proposals for assembly lines, which the engineers can choose to modify further, either by hand or with the decision support system. The group decision support system is realized with a distributed system, consisting of a front-end, a back-end, an application programming interface to balance assembly lines, and two databases. The front-end is a website, where the users can create problems with a precedence graph. The back-end allows data to be permanently stored in the two databases, and allows communication with the application programming interface. The contribution of this thesis is a proof of concept of a group decision support system that can solve two basic types of assembly line balancing problems, SALBP-1 and SALBP-2. During development it was found that the developed system was generic enough to support different types of tasks, such as planning cooking. Further development is needed to use the system in an industrial setting, as real assembly lines need more complex models than the current version support.