Architectural Design Performance Through Computational Intelligence: A Comprehensive Decision Support Framework

Identification of design solutions for a built environment that caters to the human needs at all levels, and more specifically, to the needs of the clients and the society, is the main task addressed by architectural design. Architectural design is a prime example of a design task that is characterized by a high degree of complexity....

Deterministic prediction of waves and wave induced vessel motions: Future telling by using nautical radar as a remote wave sensor

With many operations at sea carried out by ships or or other floating vessels, risks are involved because of the waves and resulting motions of the ships. Examples are the landing of helicopters on ships, transferring crew from a ship to a wind turbine, or working on the deck of an anchor handling tug. It is common practice to assess the...

Use of volunteers' information to support proactive inspection of hydraulic structures

This thesis describes the development and testing of a methodology to use information collected by volunteers and technicians on the status of hydraulic structures, applicable for day-to-day risk management. The study was performed in the northeastern Italian Alps of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. A decision support method was developed and...

Web-Based Virtual Environments for Decision Support in Water Systems

Computer graphics and scientific visualization are fields of computational science that have evolved rapidly over the past decades. Scientific visualization has become an important technology in serious gaming and science-based decision support. Water management is a complex process dealing with a wide range of, often conflicting, considerations...

Prototype of a diagnostic decision support tool for structural damage in masonry

This prototype of a diagnostic decision support tool for structural damage in traditional masonry is the result of a PhD research project. The research project has aimed to improve and facilitate the diagnostic process by offering support in the initial phase in which hypotheses are generated. The more precise hypotheses are formulated, and the...

Structural damage in masonry: Developing diagnostic decision support

This thesis deals with the diagnosis of structural damage in traditional masonry: cracks, deformations and tilts. Establishing the cause of this type of damage can be difficult. This research project has aimed to improve and facilitate the diagnostic process by offering support in the initial phase in which hypotheses are generated. The more...

A studio based approach for business engineering and mobile services

In today's world, organizations are becoming increasingly interested in using mobile technology as a means to adapt to the ever-changing environment. An important challenge that the organizations are facing is how to efficiently and effectively support business process carried out by their mobile workers in distributed environments. In the...

Gaining insight into business networks: A simulation based support environment to improve process orchestration

In today's world, organizations are becoming increasingly interested in using business networks as a means to adapt to the ever-changing environment to increase their performance level. As a result, the focus of efforts to improve the performance of organizations has shifted from organizational level to the inter-organizational level. An...

The DSOL simulation suite: Enabling multi-formalism simulation in a distributed context

In this thesis the development of a java-based, simulation environment is presented. The core concepts are to support multiple decision makers in a distributed context with multiple continuous and discrete formalisms. The environment is named DSOL and is published under the open source LGPL licence

Actor analysis for water resources management: Putting the promise into practice

Water related problems such as floods, droughts, declining groundwater tables or polluted rivers have a major impact on numerous societies throughout the world. Despite these serious problems, policy makers seem to make scant use of the knowledge that is available with water experts. Conversely, water experts face the task of finding out how...

Railway design and maintenance from a life-cycle cost perspective: A decision-support approach

Purposive interaction in multi-actor decision making: Operationalizing Coleman's linear system of action for policy decision support

Purposive Interaction in Multi-Actor Decision Making; Operationalizing Coleman's Linear System of Action for Policy Decision Support, started out with a ball and a web, a policy domain moved by a network of actors. How can the ball maintain its pace? Who are the actors that make the difference? How can policy annalists support them in moving the...

Designing electronic intermediaries: An agent-based approach for designing interorganizational coordination mechanisms

Decision support for the management of shared water resources - Data management as a cornerstone for joint DSS development

Decision Support in Business Environments