The last decade has experienced major societal challenges at the
intersection of technological systems and policy making. Prevalent
examples are the liberalization of energy and telecommunications
markets, the public aversion towards nuclear power plants, the
development of high-speed trains, the debates about global warming and
sustainability, the development of intelligent vehicle systems, and the
controversies concerning the location of waste depositories, airports,
and energy systems. These challenges, coupled with the call from
industry for a systems-engineering oriented approach to policy analysis,
motivated Delft University of Technology to launch the first European
School of Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis. and Management (SEPA).
The purpose was to educate engineering oriented policy analysts in
bridging the gap between engineering systems and policy decision making
processes, both for the public and private sector. Up to now, more than
500 first-year students and 30 Ph.D. students have enrolled in the
program. In 1993, I set up a class called Quantitative Methods for
Problem Solving which had to address the most relevant issues in
decision making for policy management, such as linear and non-linear
optimization, multiattribute utility theory, multicriteria decision
making, concepts from game theory, outranking relations, and
probabilistic influence diagrams.