A Comparative Study of Negotiation Decision Support Systems

Negotiation Support Systems (NSS) have traditionally supported the process of negotiation rather than modeled the decision-making aspects of the problem. A Negotiation Decision Support System is similar to a traditional NSS, but introduces an element of decision support by proposing offers or compromises. The decision support aspect can be improved through the use of machine intelligence, to sufficiently model the complicated and dynamic nature of the domain. Our research has focused upon the domain of Australian Family Law. We discuss, compare and contrast four systems we have built in our laboratory, Family_Negotiator, Split_Up, AdjustWinner and DEUS. In doing so, we learn the complexities of the negotiation domain, and investigate modeling issues for construction of an intelligent negotiation support tool. Our research has included the study of negotiation strategies and how to build decision support systems to help support humans use such strategies. Our future research will involve multi-criteria decision making, genetic algorithms and graph theory to build Negotiation Decision Support Systems (NDSS).