Guide: An Adaptive System for Automating Decision Support

Systems for supporting mission-critical decision making are crucial in helping the human decision maker deal with information overload, to decrease the time for decision making, and to increase the reliability and robustness of the decision making process. We propose an innovative system called GUIDE for helping support the human decision making process. GUIDE combines the technologies of knowledge representation and text processing in a novel way to address the problems of information fusion from structured and unstructured sources, representation of decision analysis, and automation of decision support. In addition, it provides visibility into the steps of the decision making process as well as the information that formed the basis of the decision, and takes into account feedback received from the human decision maker. Careful consideration has been given in GUIDE to issues critical to user adoption, namely its usability and its maintenance over time. Phase I prototype development will provide a solid foundation for complete implementation in Phase II.