Showing papers by "Simon French published in 2003"

Modelling, Making Inferences and Making Decisions: the roles of sensitivity analysis

Abstract: Sensitivity analysis, robustness studies and uncertainty analyses are key stages in the modelling, inference and evaluation used in operational research, decision analytic and risk management studies. However, sensitivity methods -or others so similar technically that they are difficult to distinguish from sensitivity methods- are used in many different circumstances for many different purposes; and the manner of their use in one context may be inappropriate in another. Thus in this paper, I categorise and explore the use of sensitivity analysis and its parallels, and in doing so I hope to provide a guide and typology to a large growing literature.

Explaining and justifying the advice of a decision support system: a natural language generation approach

Abstract: This paper describes a method for generating explanations in decision analytic contexts. Unlike other approaches, we use natural language generation techniques. The novelty of the work stems from the development of a library of text plans that structure the explanation messages conveyed. This makes our approach generic and easily adjusted to different contexts. In order to demonstrate the applicability of the method, we have developed a natural language generator that explains and justifies the advice of a decision support system for nuclear emergencies. The generator outputs two reports: a comparative report that explains the rationale behind the ranking of the alternatives and a sensitivity analysis report that gives an overall assessment of the decision model and describes the effect of varying a decision parameter.

Bringing understanding in societal decision making: explaining and communicating analyses?

Abstract: In recent years, there have been growing demands for a more participative approach to societal decision making and a higher level of accountability on the part of politicians and decision makers. Concurrently, the development of the Internet has provided an infrastructure to achieve these ends through substantive e-democracy. e-Democracy systems have the potential to draw on developments in decision support systems (DSS), involving stakeholders and the public in societal decisions. We argue that the key need in developing DSS for e-democracy contexts is to provide interfaces which explain the decision analytic techniques to users with a wide range of abilities, skills and cultures, using as an example an early application of automated explanations within a nuclear emergency management DSS. By building natural language context specific, sometimes graphical explanations, to explain and document the judgements needed in the process, this seeks to make the information from the application's domain knowledge broadly available and understandable. While recognizing that this application is limited, we believe that more sophisticated automated explanation facilities will be essential in e-democracy systems and we discuss the issues to be faced in developing these. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Food risks: integrating effective risk communication into the risk management process

Abstract: Much has been written in the past twenty years on the issues relating to the communication of food risks and safety issues to the public. Most of this research has been based upon post-hoc studies of what went wrong – or, occasionally, right. Here we survey those findings briefly and draw these into a general framework for risk management and communication. By integrating risk communication into a coherent, common framework, we believe that public authorities, food producers and industry may develop more effective communication strategies which, in turn will enable the public to make more informed decisions on their diet.