Copenhagen.
The next speaker at COST298 is Constantin-Bala Zamfirescu, whose interest is in developing Group Decision Support Systems. These have traditionally be implemented in physical infrastructure developments, such as 'situation rooms', bringing together decision makers and information in the same physical space, but can now also be turned into virtual spaces. Performance of GDSS is dependent on software configuration and instruction.
A GDSS is commonly used over a number of phases, for example from data gathering to situational awareness. Ideally it presents a solution space (possible solutions to a problem) within a larger search space (including all available information); this creates a great deal of cogitive complexity.
A solution to this problem may be the application of the concept of stigmergy (by which ants find the shortest path from nest to food sources even without any one component of the system having a global perspective, and even without direct communication). This can be applied to micro-level social simulation of human behaviours, too, in order to improve the performance of GDSSes. The results of such work still need to be validated through ethnographic work, of course.
