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DSS News
D. J. Power, Editor
June 22, 2003 -- Vol. 4, No. 13
A Bi-Weekly Publication of DSSResources.COM
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Check the case on WEBSDSS for Environmental Planning and
Management by Sugumaran and Meyer at DSSResources.COM
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Featured:
* Ask Dan! - What is the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)?
* Report from the AFRL Information Institute General Workshop
* What's New at DSSResources.COM
* DSS News Releases
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Put your ad here! Help support DSS News
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Ask Dan!
by Daniel J. Power
What is the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)?
Better known as "AHP", pronouncing each letter ("A" -- "H" -- "P"), this
decision structuring tool is well-known in operations research circles.
Approximately 25 years ago, Tom Saaty developed an approach for
prioritizing and ranking alternatives (cf., Saaty, 1977). My first
exposure to Saaty's ideas occurred in 1981 when I read his
practitioner-oriented book titled "The Analytical Hierarchy Process".
The AHP has been used extensively since it was proposed.
Ed Wasil (American University) and Bruce Golden (University of Maryland)
recently served as guest editors of a special issue of Computer &
Operations Research "Celebrating 25 years of AHP-based decision making".
They conclude "AHP has had a significant impact on the practice of
decision making." The issue has five articles including case examples of
analyzing foreign direct investment opportunities, facilitating decision
making about prostate cancer screening and evaluating neonatal
ventilators for a women's health hospital. The release of the PC-based
software program Expert Choice in 1983 made Saaty's theory and his
prescribed prioritization process more accessible and potentially more
useful for decision support.
So what is AHP? AHP is a multicriteria decision technique that can
combine qualitative and quantitative factors for prioritizing, ranking
and evaluating alternatives. The first step in AHP is to develop a
hierarchical representation of a problem. At the top of the hierarchy is
the overall objective and the decision alternatives are at the bottom.
Between the top and bottom levels are the relevant attributes of the
decision problem for comparing alternatives. The number of levels in the
hierarchy depends on the complexity of the problem and the decision
maker's model of the problem hierarchy. Once the hierarchical
representation is identified, one generates relational data for
comparing the alternatives. Then one determines the relative priority of
each attribute using the comparisons. Finally, one calculates the
priorities or weights of the lowest level alternatives relative to the
top-most objective. The AHP uses paired comparisons to develop the
prioritization. This simple, intuitive approach of comparing
alternatives limits the cognitive demand on the decision maker and
provides a means for checking the consistency of the comparisons.
A number of software packages implement AHP. The best known and most
widely used is still Expert Choice. Ernest Forman (George Washington
University) programmed the initial version of Expert Choice and he's
still involved with enhancing and marketing the software. Expert Choice
is well known for its user friendliness, it was the first graphical,
mouse-driven implementation of AHP. The company also has a group support
version of its software that uses input from keypads to support multiple
raters.
So is AHP a DSS? No, AHP is a theory of how prioritization or ranking
decisions should be made. The software Expert Choice has become more
sophisticated in the implementation of its user interface over the
years, but the underlying theory remains the same. Expert Choice can be
used for special decision support studies and it can be used for
creating a decision support system. The analytical hierarchy created in
Expert Choice can be used to support ranking tasks like rank ordering
the importance of military targets, the quality of research proposals or
the quality of investment proposals.
At DSSResources.COM, you can find a case study using Expert Choice by
John Wasyluk and Dan Saaty titled "Developing a Portfolio Approach to
Capital Investment: A Case Study in Re-Engineering Resource Allocation
at the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs". The case describes the
use of Team Expert Choice to support the capital investment process at
the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs. "The decision model was
delivered to the project evaluation team on a laptop with radio
frequency keypads to enable the team to efficiently rate each project
against the objectives to which it contributed. The software allowed
decision makers to use both quantitative and qualitative information to
rate competing investments".
So congratulations to Tom Saaty and good wishes to all of the people at
Expert Choice, Inc. You should visit www.expertchoice.com.
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References
Forman, E. H. and M. A. Selly, Decision by Objectives: How to Convince
Others That You Are Right, World Scientific Publishing Company, December
2001.
Saaty, T., A scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures,
Journal of Mathematical Psychology, vol. 15, 1977, pp. 234-281.
Saaty, T., The Analytical Hierarchy Process, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill,
1980.
Wasil, E. and B. Golden, "Celebrating 25 years of AHP-based decision
making," (editorial), Computers & Operations Research, vol. 30, issue
10, Sept. 2003, pp. 1419-1420.
Wasyluk, O. John, and Daniel Saaty, "Developing a Portfolio Approach to
Capital Investment: A Case Study in Re-Engineering Resource Allocation
at the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs", Expert Choice, Inc., 2001,
posted at DSSResources.COM December 14, 2001.
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Report from the AFRL Information Institute General Workshop
On Tuesday and Wednesday, June 11-12, 2003, I attended the General
Workshop of the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) Information Institute.
The workshop focused on leading edge information systems, computer
science and computer engineering research opportunities with AFRL. The
workshop was held at the headquarters of the AFRL Information
Directorate in Rome, NY.
Mr. John Graniero, Director of the Information Institute, provided an
update on Institute activities. Then Dr. Nort Fowler, Acting Chief
Scientist of the AFRL Information Directorate (IFD), discussed ongoing
research projects and plans for the directorate. In general, IFD is
responsible for Air Force related command, control, communication and
computers and intelligence (C4I) research and development. Dr. Bob
Herklotz and Dr. Fred Schneider then discussed some broad research
opportunities. In the afternoon, eleven presenters introduced the
mini-workshop breakout topics. The topics ranged from Quantum
Communications, Information Assurance, Decision Support and
Effects-based Operations to Mixed-Initiative Decision Making.
Wednesday morning I attended the discussion of research needs and
opportunities for Mixed-Initiative Decision Making led by Joe Carozzoni.
You might be wondering what that term "mixed-initiative decision
making" means and I had the same feeling. It seems the term means a
human decision maker can take the "initiative" in a decision situation
and request decision support or the decision support environment or an
intelligent agent can initiate requests or alerts or initiate other
actions. The decision support envirnment may consist of programs
monitoring activities, fusing information, and in other ways making
decision relevant information available to a decision maker or group of
decision makers. After attending the session, I've concluded that there
is a renewed interest in developing expert systems and intelligent
agents to participant in important decision processes. Imagine going
beyond simple agents that alert a decision maker to changed conditions
and rule-based expert systems and then imagine an "intelligent advisor"
that provides additional staff support and has a wide knowledge-base the
decision maker can draw upon in decision making. An intelligent avatar,
a digital Aristotle, a cyborg or an android comes to mind. The current
research initiative won't quickly create a "Commander Data" of Star Trek
TNG fame, but it seems to take a step in that direction. The goal seems
to be developing a better technology or technologies for creating
advanced knowledge-driven DSS.
Many thanks to John Graniero. The workshop was a great opportunity for
me to learn more about research at AFRL IFD. My summer research project
on Advanced Decision and Planning Support is funded by the AFRL
Information Institute. I'm working at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
the Collaborative Simulations Branch of AFRL IFD until mid-August. I
hope to see some of you at ISDSS'03 in Ustron, Poland in mid-July. You
can find out more about the AFRL Information Institute at
http://www.rl.af.mil/rrs/Info_Inst/ .
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What's New at DSSResources.COM
06/14/2003 Posted case by Sugumaran, R. and J. Meyer, "Building a
Web-Based Spatial Decision Support System (WEBSDSS) for Environmental
Planning and Management", 2003. Check the case studies page.
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DSS News Releases - June 8 to June 20, 2003
06/20/2003 MindManager for Tablet PC named finalist: CeBIT America Best
of Show.
06/19/2003 BrainStorm Group announces the BPM Institute
(BPMInstitute.org).
06/19/2003 Leading Korean retailer Lotte Mart successfully deploys
MicroStrategy Technology Enterprise-Wide.
06/18/2003 US Army Knowledge Management (AKM) selects Entrieva software
for Communities of Practice (COPS) taxonomy initiative.
06/18/2003 Informatica introduces guaranteed "Data to Dashboard"
business intelligence challenge.
06/17/2003 Electronic 'Driver Advocate' helps keep focus on the road in
DaimlerChrysler technology concept vehicle.
06/16/2003 CorVu customer PLIVA wins Balanced Scorecard Collaborative
Hall of Fame Award.
06/16/2003 Guidewire selected by CNA for enterprise-wide claim
initiative.
06/16/2003 Comshare(R) to supply Proquest Company with Comshare MPC(TM)
complete corporate performance management system.
06/16/2003 Sega.com announces the official launch of Legacy Online; to
celebrate the launch, Sega.com and Oceanus will conduct massively
multi-player online gaming tournaments.
06/16/2003 RightNow develops business activity monitoring system to
optimize business processes and actions to ensure success.
06/16/2003 Intelligroup develops ScorPac to easily assess supply chain
effectiveness in SAP(R) Solutions.
06/13/2003 Seattle first city to receive TrafficGauge mobile traffic
map.
06/12/2003 Primus Knowledge Solutions announces upcoming release of
Primus eServer 5.2 Knowledgebase.
06/12/2003 Vulcan Inc. completes first step toward Digital Aristotle;
'Project Halo' exceeds expectations for automated reasoning by AI
systems.
06/12/2003 Survey shows accounting professionals need more than numbers
know-how.
06/11/2003 DataSynapse awarded Risk Management Solution of the Year and
Business ROI of the Year by The Banker.
06/11/2003 Worcester Polytechnic Institute study finds most U.S. Gov't
web sites are not fully accessible to the disabled.
06/11/2003 James Gosling, creator of Java, celebrates 'Innovation
Everywhere' with Java Technology.
06/10/2003 MicroStrategy and SYSTIME form strategic alliance.
06/09/2003 OLAP pioneer Erik Thomsen joins Hyperion as distinguished
scientist.
06/09/2003 Reality Interactive announces preview of industry leading
Simulation Container technology.
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DSS News is copyrighted (c) 2003 by D. J. Power. Please send your questions to
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