Applied Decision Analysis

Risk and uncertainty are inescapable factors in agriculture which require careful management. Farmers face production risks from the weather, crop and livestock performance, and pests and diseases, as well as institutional, personal and business risks. This revised third edition of the popular textbook includes updated chapters on theory and methods and contains a new chapter discussing the state-contingent approach to the analysis of production and the use of copulas to better model stochastic dependency. Aiming to introduce agricultural decision making, probability and risk preference, this book is an indispensable guide for students and researchers of agriculture and agribusiness management.

Taking advantage of the many specialists visiting Spain prior to the INFORMS Meeting in Barcelona, hold from July 14th to July 17th 1997, we organized a work shop on Decision Analysis Applications at the Real Academia de Ciencias, Madrid, Spain, from J uly 11th to 12th 1997, under the sponsorship of de the Instituto Espaiia. This workshop had a precedent in the International Conference Decision Making: Towards the 21st Century also held at the Real Academia de Ciencias in 1993. The idea of organizing an event, this time devoted to applications of Decision Analysis, was due to Prof. Sixto Rfos, who some four years ago, .sponsored and encouraged by the Royal Academy of Sciences, was the creator of an Interdisciplinary Working Group on Decision Analysis -formed with researchers from within and outside this Academy- which has been active since then, organizing periodical meetings, and whose last project has tumed out into this Workshop. The workshop turned out to be an stimulating opportunity for communicating and discussing the enormous variety of applications of Decision Sciences. In this volume we have included most of the invited papers and a selection of refereed contributed papers. Due to the varied nature of the applications, we have grouped them into five groups ending, as way of an epilog, with a paper by Sarin which contains important insights and reftections on the nature of Decision Analysis in public and private sectors.

Taking advantage of the many specialists visiting Spain prior to the INFORMS Meeting in Barcelona, hold from July 14th to July 17th 1997, we organized a work shop on Decision Analysis Applications at the Real Academia de Ciencias, Madrid, Spain, from J uly 11th to 12th 1997, under the sponsorship of de the Instituto Espaiia. This workshop had a precedent in the International Conference Decision Making: Towards the 21st Century also held at the Real Academia de Ciencias in 1993. The idea of organizing an event, this time devoted to applications of Decision Analysis, was due to Prof. Sixto Rfos, who some four years ago, .sponsored and encouraged by the Royal Academy of Sciences, was the creator of an Interdisciplinary Working Group on Decision Analysis -formed with researchers from within and outside this Academy- which has been active since then, organizing periodical meetings, and whose last project has tumed out into this Workshop. The workshop turned out to be an stimulating opportunity for communicating and discussing the enormous variety of applications of Decision Sciences. In this volume we have included most of the invited papers and a selection of refereed contributed papers. Due to the varied nature of the applications, we have grouped them into five groups ending, as way of an epilog, with a paper by Sarin which contains important insights and reftections on the nature of Decision Analysis in public and private sectors.

The optimisation of economic systems over time, and in an uncertain environment, is central to the study of economic behaviour. The behaviour of rational decision makers, whether they are market agents, firms, or governments and their agencies, is governed by decisions designed to seeure the best outcomes subject to the perceived information and economic responses (inlcuding those of other agents). Economic behaviour has therefore to be analysed in terms of the outcomes of a multiperiod stochastic optimisation process containing four main components: the economic responses (the dynamic constraints, represented by an economic model); the objec tive function (the goals and their priorities); the conditioning information (expected exogenous events and the expected future state of the economy); and risk manage ment (how uncertainties are accommodated). The papers presented in this book all analyse some aspect of economic behaviour related to the objectives, information, or risk components of the decision process. While the construction of economic models obviously also has a vital role to play, that component has received much greater (or almost exclusive) attention elsewhere. These papers examine optimising behaviour in a wide range of economic problems, both theoretical and applied. They reflect a variety of concerns: economic responses under rational expectations; the Lucas critique and optimal fiscal or monetary poli eies; market management; partly endogenous goals; evaluating government reactions; locational decisions; uncertainty and information structures; and forecasting with endogenous reactions.

For courses in Decision Making and Engineering. The Fundamentals of Analyzing and Making Decisions Foundations of Decision Analysis is a groundbreaking text that explores the art of decision making, both in life and in professional settings. By exploring themes such as dealing with uncertainty and understanding the distinction between a decision and its outcome, the First Edition teaches readers to achieve clarity of action in any situation. The book treats decision making as an evolutionary process from a scientific standpoint. Strategic decision-making analysis is presented as a tool to help students understand, discuss, and settle on important life choices. Through this text, readers will understand the specific thought process that occurs behind approaching any decision to make easier and better life choices for themselves.

This book is intended for the GIS Science and Decision Science communities. It is primarily targeted at postgraduate students and practitioners in GIS and urban, regional and environmental planning as well as applied decision analysis. It is also suitable for those studying and working with spatial decision support systems. The main objectives of this book are to effectivley integrate Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) into Geographic Information Science (GIScience), to provide a comprehensive account of theories, methods, technologies and tools for tackling spatial decision problems and to demonstrate how the GIS-MCDA approaches can be used in a wide range of planning and management situations.

Decision Analysis for Management Judgment is unique in its breadth of coverage of decision analysis methods. It covers both the psychological problems that are associated with unaided managerial decision making and the decision analysis methods designed to overcome them. It is presented and explained in a clear, straightforward manner without using mathematical notation. This latest edition has been fully revised and updated and includes a number of changes to reflect the latest developments in the field.