Showing papers by "Simon French published in 1992"

Decision conferencing and the International Chernobyl Project

Abstract: As part of the International Chernobyl Project, five decision conferences were held with the Soviet Authorities to identify the major factors driving decision making in relation to relocation and other protective measures which are being applied in the affected regions of Byelorussia, Ukraine and the Russian Federation. The authors describe the running of those conferences and the conclusions reached from them.

Mathematical Programming Approaches to Sensitivity Calculations in Decision Analysis

Abstract: A general framework for sensitivity analysis of discrete multi-criteria decision problems with or without uncertainty has been developed. The framework results in the need to solve very many mathematical programmes and hence is being implemented using parallel programming techniques. The method is illustrated with reference to a simple decision tree problem.

Towards a shared understanding

Abstract: The severe nuclear accident which occurred at Chernobyl in 1986 has had many consequences. A reactor was completely destroyed, releasing radio-nuclides and radioactive debris for about 10 days. Vast tracts of land were contaminated, requiring countermeasures both within the USSR and in other countries in the northern hemisphere. At the request of the Soviet Authorities an international project was organized in 1990 investigate some of the accident's consequences and its effects on the population still living in the region. Seven international agencies participated, co-ordinated by the international Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA). Specifically, the Soviet request was for:

Strategic Decision Analysis and Group Decision Support

Abstract: The context of group decision support within an organisation is discussed. In particular, the paper focuses on the needs of senior management teams facing long-term complex strategic issues. The use of facilitated workshops is discussed, particularly the format used by decision conferencing. Advances in computing power and displays have been central to the development of decision conferencing, because they allow the results of a decision analysis to be generated interactively and explored graphically. Some applications are noted to strategic decision making both within and outside the computer industry

Implementation of a decision analytic aid to support examiners' judgements in aggregating pairs of components

Abstract: In a series of papers, the case has been argued for viewing the process of aggregating marks in an examination from a decision theoretic (or measurement theoretic) standpoint. The purpose of aggregating marks is to form an overall ranking of the candidates that corresponds with the ranking that the examiners would generate by holistic judgement, if they had the time and the powers of consistency required. Models of aggregation that parallel multi-attribute value functions have been proposed. These models have not, until recently, been trialed with practising examiners, however. The problem has been that the interactive procedure, which the assessment of the models requires, needed to be implemented within a general examination processing package so that the context in which the models are used could be as realistic as possible. This has now been achieved for the restricted case of aggregating two components, and preliminary trials with examiners have begun. The implementation adopted was not the lock-step procedure originally suggested, but rather a least-squares fitting procedure of finite-difference approximations to the aggregation functions. Although a least squares procedure is used, the assessment is iterative and allows the users to revise their judgements in the light of possible inconsistencies. The authors believe this approach has not been used before, either in the examination context or in the assessment of multi-attribute utility functions.