An intelligent decision support system (IDSS) is a
decision support system
A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and h ...
that makes extensive use of
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
(AI) techniques. Use of AI techniques in
management information systems
A management information system (MIS) is an information system used for decision-making, and for the coordination, control, analysis, and visualization of information in an organization. The study of the management information systems involves peop ...
has a long history – indeed terms such as "
Knowledge-based systems
A knowledge-based system (KBS) is a computer program that reasons and uses a knowledge base to solve complex problems. The term is broad and refers to many different kinds of systems. The one common theme that unites all knowledge based systems is ...
" (KBS) and "intelligent systems" have been used since the early 1980s to describe components of management systems, but the term "Intelligent decision support system" is thought to originate with Clyde Holsapple and
Andrew Whinston in the late 1970s. Examples of specialized intelligent decision support systems include
Flexible manufacturing system
A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a manufacturing system in which there is some amount of flexibility that allows the system to react in case of changes, whether predicted or unpredicted.
This flexibility is generally considered to fall i ...
s (FMS), intelligent marketing decision support systems and medical diagnosis systems.
Ideally, an intelligent decision support system should behave like a human consultant:
supporting decision makers by gathering and analysing evidence, identifying and diagnosing problems, proposing possible courses of action and evaluating such proposed actions. The aim of the AI techniques embedded in an intelligent decision support system is to enable these tasks to be performed by a computer, while emulating human capabilities as closely as possible.
Many IDSS implementations are based on
expert systems
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if†...
, a well established type of KBS that encode knowledge and emulate the cognitive behaviours of human experts using predicate logic rules, and have been shown to perform better than the original human experts in some circumstances.
Expert systems
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if†...
emerged as practical applications in the 1980s based on research in artificial intelligence performed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They typically combine knowledge of a particular application domain with an
inference
Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinction that in ...
capability to enable the system to propose decisions or diagnoses. Accuracy and consistency can be comparable to (or even exceed) that of human experts when the decision parameters are well known (e.g. if a common disease is being diagnosed), but performance can be poor when novel or uncertain circumstances arise.
Research in AI focused on enabling systems to respond to novelty and uncertainty in more flexible ways is starting to be used in IDSS. For example,
intelligent agent
In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is anything which perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously in order to achieve goals, and may improve its performance with learning or may use knowledge. They may be simple or c ...
s that perform complex
cognitive tasks without any need for human intervention have been used in a range of decision support applications. Capabilities of these intelligent agents include
knowledge sharing
Knowledge sharing is an activity through which knowledge (namely, information, skills, or expertise) is exchanged among people, friends, peers, families, communities (for example, Wikipedia), or within or between organizations. It bridges the ind ...
,
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence.
Machine ...
,
data mining, and automated
inference
Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinction that in ...
. A range of AI techniques such as
case based reasoning
In artificial intelligence and philosophy, case-based reasoning (CBR), broadly construed, is the process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems.
In everyday life, an auto mechanic who fixes an engine by recalli ...
,
rough set
In computer science, a rough set, first described by Polish computer scientist Zdzisław I. Pawlak, is a formal approximation of a crisp set (i.e., conventional set) in terms of a pair of sets which give the ''lower'' and the ''upper'' approximati ...
s
Laboratory of intelligent decision support systems, Poznan
/ref> and fuzzy logic
Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely ...
have also been used to enable decision support systems to perform better in uncertain conditions.
References
Further reading
* Turban, E., Aronson J., & Liang T.: Decision support systems and Intelligent systems (2004) Pearson
External links
A brief history of DSS
{{DEFAULTSORT:Intelligent Decision Support Systems
Artificial intelligence
Information systems
Decision support systems
Knowledge engineering