This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Decision Support Systems Technologies, ICDSST 2019, held in Madeira, Portugal, in May 2019. This year the conference is a EURO mini conference and therefore has a slightly different acronym: "EmC-ICDSST 2019". The EWG-DSS series of International Conference on Decision Support System Technology (ICDSST), starting with ICDSST 2015 in Belgrade, was planned to consolidate the tradition of annual events organized by the EWG-DSS in offering a platform for European and international DSS communities, comprising the academic and industrial sectors, to present state-of-the-art DSS research and developments, to discuss current challenges that surround decision-making processes, to exchange ideas about realistic and innovative solutions, and to co-develop potential business opportunities. The main topic of this year’s conference was “Main Developments and Future Trends”. The 11 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 59 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: decision support systems in societal issues; decision support systems in industrial and business applications; and advances in decision support systems’ methods and technologies.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Decision Support Systems Technologies, ICDSST 2020, organised in Zaragoza, Spain, in May 2020. The conference was held online only due to the Corona pandemic. The EWG-DSS series of International Conference on Decision Support System Technology (ICDSST) is planned to consolidate the tradition of annual events organized by the EWG-DSS in offering a platform for European and international DSS communities, comprising the academic and industrial sectors, to present state-of-the-art DSS research and developments, to discuss current challenges that surround decision-making processes, to exchange ideas about realistic and innovative solutions, and to co-develop potential business opportunities. The main topic of this year’s conference was “Cognitive Decision Support Systems and Technologies”. The 13 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 51 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: methodological contributions; case studies and applications; and overview (on the current state and future trends of DSS, BI, and data analytics research).

It is not easy to summarize -even in a volume -the results of a scientific study con ducted by circa 30 researchers, in four different research institutions, though cooperating between them and jointly with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, but working part-time, sponsored not only by IIASA's national currency funds, but also by several other research grants in Poland. The aims of this cooperative study were de fined broadly by its title Theory, Software and Testing Examples for Decision Support Systems. The focusing theme was the methodology of decision analysis and support related to the principle of reference point optimization (developed by the editors of this volume and called also variously: aspiration-led decision support, quasi-satisfying framework of rationality, DIDAS methodology etc. ). This focusing theme motivated extensive theoretical research - from basic methodological issues of decision analysis, through various results in mathematical programming (in the fields of large scale and stochastic optimization, nondifferentiable optimization, cooperative game theory) mo tivated and needed because of this theme, through methodological issues related to software development to issues resulting from testing and applications. We could not include in this volume all papers -theoretical, methodological, appiied, software manu als and documentation -written during this cooperative study.

In the past, technological as well as economic forces dominated the evolution of industrial structures: these factors have been treated extensively in numerous studies. However, another major factor which has begun to have a decisive influ ence on the performance of the chemical industry is technological risk and public and environmental health considerations, in particular those related to toxic and hazardous substances used in industrial production processes. The issues of con trolling process risk, waste streams, and potential environmental consequences of accidental or routine release of hazardous chemicals are rapidly gaining in impor tance vis CI vis narrow economic considerations, and are increasingly reflected in national and international legislation. In the context of several ongoing R&D projects aiming at the development of a new generation of tools for "intelligent" decision support, two related problem areas that have been identified are: (i) Structuring the industry or plant for the minimum cost of production as well as least risk - e.g., toxicity of chemicals involved. In this multi-criteria framework, we seek to resolve the conflict between industrial structure or plant design established by economic considerations and the one shaped by environmental concerns. This can be formulated as a design problem for nor mal production conditions. In section 3.1. and 3.2. an approach on how to deal with this problem at the industry and plant level is discussed.

In the last 25 years, the fuzzy set theory has been applied in many disciplines such as operations research, management science, control theory, artificial intelligence/expert system, etc. In this volume, methods and applications of crisp, fuzzy and possibilistic multiple objective decision making are first systematically and thoroughly reviewed and classified. This state-of-the-art survey provides readers with a capsule look into the existing methods, and their characteristics and applicability to analysis of fuzzy and possibilistic programming problems. To realize practical fuzzy modelling, it presents solutions for real-world problems including production/manufacturing, location, logistics, environment management, banking/finance, personnel, marketing, accounting, agriculture economics and data analysis. This book is a guided tour through the literature in the rapidly growing fields of operations research and decision making and includes the most up-to-date bibliographical listing of literature on the topic.

Annotation The book presents state-of-the-art knowledge about decision-making support systems (DMSS). Its main goals are to provide a compendium of quality chapters on decision-making support systems that help diffuse scarce knowledge about effective methods and strategies for successfully designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating decision-making support systems, and to create an awareness among readers about the relevance of decision-making support systems in the current complex and dynamic management environment.