Cognition-driven decision support system (DSS) has been recognized as a
paradigm in the research and development of business intelligence (BI).
Cognitive decision support aims to help managers in their decision
making from human cognitive aspects, such as thinking, sensing,
understanding and predicting, and fully reuse their experience. Among
these cognitive aspects, decision makers' situation awareness (SA) and
mental models are considered to be two important prerequisites for
decision making, particularly in ill-structured and dynamic decision
situations with uncertainties, time pressure and high personal stake. In
today's business domain, decision making is becoming increasingly
complex. To make a successful decision, managers' SA about their
business environments becomes a critical factor.
This book presents theoretical models as well practical techniques of
cognitiondriven DSS. It first introduces some important concepts of
cognition orientation in decision making process and some techniques in
related research areas including DSS, data warehouse and BI, offering
readers a preliminary for moving forward in this book. It then proposes
a cognition-driven decision process (CDDP) model which incorporates SA
and experience (mental models) as its central components. The goal of
the CDDP model is to facilitate cognitive decision support to managers
on the basis of BI systems. It also presents relevant techniques
developed to support the implementation of the CDDP model in a BI
environment. Key issues addressed of a typical business decision cycle
in the CDDP model include: natural language interface for a manager's SA
input, extraction of SA semantics, construction of data warehouse
queries based on the manger's SA and experience, situation information
retrieval from data warehouse, how the manager perceives situation
information and update SA, how the manager's SA leads to a final
decision. Finally, a cognition-driven DSS, FACETS, and two illustrative
applications of this system are discussed.
