Forests and Sustainable Decision Support Systems at International Conference in DSS Technology

Jun

06.15.2016 |

joseborges

The 2016 International Conference on Decision Support System Technology (https://icdsst2016.wordpress.com/) took place in May 23-25, 2016 in Plymouth, UK. It was organized by the EURO Working Group for Decision Support Systems. This year conference focused on DSS for Addressing Sustainability and Societal Challenges. The conference involved around 50 participants from 16 countries in Europe, Africa, America and Asia (China, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, UK, Portugal, Austria, Serbia, Greece, Czech Republic, South Africa, Canada, Brazil and USA). Its program encompassed 4 keynote presentations addressing current main issues of decision-making in the different fields such as manufacturing, building, environment or financial uncertainty. It encompassed further more than 30 oral presentations organized into 7 sessions focusing on themes such as a) Knowledge-based DSS, b) DSS applications in healthcare and management, c) Data Analytics and risk analysis, d) Multiple Criteria Decision Making, e) Forest and Sustainable DSS, f) Supply chain and logistics DSS, g) DSS applications.

The session on “Forest and Sustainable DSS” focused on the use of DSS in forest resources management and policy analysis’. It aimed at presenting and discussing the state-of-the-art DSS in the forest sector. Decision makers are facing many challenges in managing forest resources in a sustainable manner and addressing the rising demands from society. Although the consideration of the interactions in spatial and temporal contexts between society and forest resource management is complex, there is a need for easy to use decision support tools. The special session of the ICDSST 2016 conference allowed to explore these challenges and discuss options for smart solutions.It encompassed 5 oral presentations:

An Operations Research-based Morphological Analysis to Support Environmental Management Decision-Making” by M. F. Teles;
A Web-based Forest and Natural Resources Decision Support System: SADfLOR by M. Marto;
A Multicriteria Decision Model for selecting Wastewater Treatment Systems for Brazilian Industrial Laundries by S. Daher;
Challenges in the Design of Forest Management Decision Support Systems addressing Sustainability and Societal Demands by Jan Kašpar and
DSS Optimal for Use in Brazil Plantation Management by Jan Kašpar.

The conference worked well as a meeting place for experts on the development and implementation of DSS and operations research methods. It brought together researchers at very different stages of their careers, from PhD students to professors and from different continents. The special session helped disseminate research on the use of DSS in forest sector among the wider DSS research and developer communities. The participants had the opportunity to share some ideas, knowledge and experience in a more informal way in the conference social activities. This may help strengthen the recent ties between IUFRO and the Community of Practice (CoP) on Forest Management Decision Support Systems (http://www.forestdss.org/) and the Euro Working Group on Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS) (https://ewgdss.wordpress.com/about/).

The video recording from ICDSST 2016 for all plenary sessions are available on YouTube produced by the team of Prof. Shaofeng Liu at the University of Plymouth:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHpn_CgmzQw0bwlHLXhhIyfrzq2dioh5S.

These include a list of links to:

Conference opening session - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNlzFUIKoT4&index=1&list=PLHpn_CgmzQw0bwlHLXhhIyfrzq2dioh5S

Two Panel sessions: