After having completed the course, the students are able to: - Find, analyse and evaluate existing decision support tools for application in planning design and establish for a given tool a) the moment in the planning/design decision process where it can be used, b) the way in which it technically can be used and d) the extent to which and in what way it it will improve the quality of decisions.
- Analyse decision problems and processes in planning/design and determine for a concrete case with which type of tools the quality of the decisions can be improved and what the expected surplus value this will yield.
- Apply the knowledge related to 1 and 2 to integrate decision support tools in the planing/design process and to act as an intermediary between the developers of tools, on the one hand, and the end users of the tools, on the other.
Generating a plan or a design is a process that generally involves a number of stages. These include: establishing and analysing what the problem exactly is for which the plan/design intends to offer a solution, elaborating plan/design alternatives, assessing the pros and cons of the alternatives and making a choice. The lecture focuses on the theory behind and the application of Decision Support Systems (DSS), i.e. computer programs that aim at assisting planners/designers in making decisions in each of these stages. Attention is paid to methods of structuring the decision making process, the structure of DSS and points of consideration in developing a DSS. In exercises you will obtain experience in applying the existing systems and you will test and assess the utility of the systems for practice. |
