A Framework for a Scenario Driven Decision Support Systems Generator

Abstract

Traditional Decision Support Systems (DSS) provide strong data management, modelling and visualisation capabilities for the decision maker but they do not explicitly support scenario management appropriately. Systems that purport to support scenario planning are complex and difficult to use and do not fully support all phases of scenario management. We introduce scenario as a core component of decision making systems and present a life cycle approach for scenario management, which helps the decision maker with idea generation, scenario planning, development, organisation, analysis, execution, evaluation, and decision support. This research designs and develops a domain independent framework and architecture for Scenario-driven Decision Support Systems Generator that aligns the DSS with the scenario management process. We then propose a generalised evaluation process that allows homogeneous and heterogeneous scenario comparisons among multiple instances of similar and dissimilar scenarios respectively. The framework and architecture is implemented and validated through a concrete prototype.