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Books in Decision sciences

Our Decision Sciences titles care essential reading for students and professionals, and cover key topics in decision support systems, and global logistics, among other areas of research and practice

  • Info-Gap Decision Theory

    Decisions Under Severe Uncertainty
    • 2nd Edition
    • Yakov Ben-Haim
    • English
    Everyone makes decisions, but not everyone is a decision analyst. A decision analyst uses quantitative models and computational methods to formulate decision algorithms, assess decision performance, identify and evaluate options, determine trade-offs and risks, evaluate strategies for investigation, and so on. Info-Gap Decision Theory is written for decision analysts. The term "decision analyst" covers an extremely broad range of practitioners. Virtually all engineers involved in design (of buildings, machines, processes, etc.) or analysis (of safety, reliability, feasibility, etc.) are decision analysts, usually without calling themselves by this name. In addition to engineers, decision analysts work in planning offices for public agencies, in project management consultancies, they are engaged in manufacturing process planning and control, in financial planning and economic analysis, in decision support for medical or technological diagnosis, and so on and on. Decision analysts provide quantitative support for the decision-making process in all areas where systematic decisions are made. This second edition entails changes of several sorts. First, info-gap theory has found application in several new areas - especially biological conservation, economic policy formulation, preparedness against terrorism, and medical decision-making. Pertinent new examples have been included. Second, the combination of info-gap analysis with probabilistic decision algorithms has found wide application. Consequently "hybrid" models of uncertainty, which were treated exclusively in a separate chapter in the previous edition, now appear throughout the book as well as in a separate chapter. Finally, info-gap explanations of robust-satisficing behavior, and especially the Ellsberg and Allais "paradoxes", are discussed in a new chapter together with a theorem indicating when robust-satisficing will have greater probability of success than direct optimizing with uncertain models.

  • Ethical Decision Making for Digital Libraries

    • 1st Edition
    • Cokie Anderson
    • English
    This book examines the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in digital libraries, and the codes of conduct, professional guidelines and ethics resources used in resolving them. The book begins with an overview of classical and applied ethics, then reviews the codes of conduct of professional information societies (libraries, archivists, information technology). The book then examines issues and situations that arise in digitization and digital library management, and explores the ways established information ethics can be applied and adapted to these cases.

  • Handbook of Economic Forecasting

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 1
    • G. Elliott + 2 more
    • English
    Research on forecasting methods has made important progress over recent years and these developments are brought together in the Handbook of Economic Forecasting. The handbook covers developments in how forecasts are constructed based on multivariate time-series models, dynamic factor models, nonlinear models and combination methods. The handbook also includes chapters on forecast evaluation, including evaluation of point forecasts and probability forecasts and contains chapters on survey forecasts and volatility forecasts. Areas of applications of forecasts covered in the handbook include economics, finance and marketing.

  • Managing Maintenance Resources

    • 1st Edition
    • Anthony Kelly
    • English
    Managing Maintenance Resources shows how to reduce the complexity involved in engineering, or re-engineering, a maintenance organization. It recognises that this is a complex problem involving many inter-related decisions – such as whether or not resources should be centralized, contractor alliances be entered into or flexible working be adopted. This book provides a unique approach to modeling maintenance-producti... organizations. It enables the identification of problems and delivers guidelines to develop effective solutions. This is one of three stand-alone volumes designed to provide maintenance professionals in any sector with a better understanding of maintenance management, enabling the identification of problems and the delivery of effective solutions.

  • Handbooks in Operations Research and Management Science

    Discrete Optimization
    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 12
    • K. Aardal + 2 more
    • English
    The chapters of this Handbook volume cover nine main topics that are representative of recenttheoretical and algorithmic developments in the field. In addition to the nine papers that present the state of the art, there is an article on the early history of the field. The handbook will be a useful reference to experts in the field as well as students and others who want to learn about discrete optimization.

  • Measuring the Marginal Social Cost of Transport

    • 1st Edition
    • Volume 14
    • Christopher Nash + 1 more
    • English
    Many transport economists have for some time proposed marginal social cost as the principle on which prices in the transport sector should be based and, in recent years, their prescription has come to be taken more and more seriously by policy-makers. However, in order to properly test the possible implications of implementing pricing based on marginal social cost and, ultimately, to introduce such a system, it is necessary to actually measure the marginal social costs concerned, and how they vary according to mode, time and context. This book reviews the transport pricing policy debate and reports on the significant advances made in measuring the marginal social costs of transport, particularly through UNITE and other European research projects. We look in turn at infrastructure, operating costs, user costs (both of congestion and of charges in frequency of scheduled transport services) accidents and environmental costs, and how these estimates have been used to examine the impact of marginal cost pricing in transport. We finish by examining how the results of case studies might be generalised to obtain estimates of marginal social costs for all circumstances and, finally, presenting our conclusions.

  • Statistics in Medicine

    • 2nd Edition
    • Robert H. Riffenburgh
    • English
    Medicine deals with treatments that work often but not always, so treatment success must be based on probability. Statistical methods lift medical research from the anecdotal to measured levels of probability. This book presents the common statistical methods used in 90% of medical research, along with the underlying basics, in two parts: a textbook section for use by students in health care training programs, e.g., medical schools or residency training, and a reference section for use by practicing clinicians in reading medical literature and performing their own research. The book does not require a significant level of mathematical knowledge and couches the methods in multiple examples drawn from clinical medicine, giving it applicable context.

  • Reliability, Maintainability and Risk

    Practical Methods for Engineers including Reliability Centred Maintenance and Safety-Related Systems
    • 7th Edition
    • David J. Smith
    • English
    For over 30 years, Reliability, Maintainability and Risk has been recognised as a leading text for reliability and maintenance professionals. Now in its seventh edition, the book has been updated to remain the first choice for professional engineers and students. The seventh edition incorporates new material on important topics including software failure, the latest safety legislation and standards, product liability, integrity of safety-related systems, as well as delivering an up-to-date review of the latest approaches to reliability modelling, including cutsec ranking. It is also supported by new detailed case studies on reliability and risk in practice.

  • Economic Capital Allocation with Basel II

    Cost, Benefit and Implementation Procedures
    • 1st Edition
    • Dimitris N. Chorafas
    • English
    This book is a complimentary follow-on book to Operational Risk Control with Basel II. While the previous book focuses on operational risk, Economic Capital Allocation provides an overview of credit risk within the context of the Basel II accords.The book provides:* comprehensive coverage of the evolution of the banking industry with Basel II in mind* extensive information on the capital requirements for bank liquidity and solvency * coverage of the new rules as laid down by the supervisory authorities of the Group of Ten industrialized nations* key information on the technical requirements for credit institutions such as: new credit rating scales, modeling of credit risk, control of operational risks, and, novel ways and means for the management of exposure to Credit Risk

  • Regulation and Compliance in Operations

    • 1st Edition
    • David Loader
    • English
    'Regulation and Compliance in Operations' looks at how regulation affects the operations function by focusing on regulatory issues and drivers. As regulatory demands ever increasing, it is important for operations teams to be aware of the important regulatory issues which exist globally. Like any other part of an organization in the financial services industry, operations has rules and regulations to comply with. Although many view regulation as being about rooting out rogue traders and controlling speculators, its role is much more profound than this, and without it many more 'scandals' would undoubtedly occur. The problem for the regulator is that unless total oversight of every transaction, account, business and individual can be made, there will always be rogue traders or more recent examples like Enron and World.Com. As such intense oversight is not practical, the regulator can only do so much, with most of the responsibility resting with the firms and organizations themselves.For operations teams their role in protecting the firm stems from their ability to manage critical processes like reconciliation, asset position agreements and the nostro accounts efficiently and effectively. Regulators need the help and support of the businesses to have a 'business-friendly environment'. When some abuse the trust placed in them and the regulatory environment, a 'scandal' or worse occurs, with the result that the majority are penalized as regulators react to criticism and apply more onerous regulations.It is often the operations teams that bear most, or at least some, of the repercussions of greater regulatory oversight of the business. It is therefore vitally important for operations teams to have a firm understanding of the regulatory issues and drivers. This book will help you gain that understanding, as well as looking at the important regulatory issues in the various global markets in which your business operates.

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