Interactive Computer Support in Decision Conferencing: the Case of Nuclear Emergency Management

We have applied different ways of decision conferencing as an approach to support complex decision making problems [see e.g. Hämäläinen and Leikola 1996; Hämäläinen et al. 1998, 2000a, 2000b, 2001]. In decision conferences, also called facilitated workshops, all the decision making parties are gathered to discuss and process the problem thoroughly. All the relevant alternatives are evaluated with a systematic approach. Computer support can be used to facilitate different phases of the process, e.g. modeling of the problem, evaluation of the alternatives and analysis of the results. In this paper, we study the use of a decision support system (DSS) in a decision conference for planning countermeasures to dairy products in a nuclear accident. A day long computer aided conference exercise was held to consider the problem from different perspectives. From the point of view of radiation safety, the objective of the conference was to consider different alternatives for the possible countermeasures. The experiences and the results can then be utilized in a real emergency situation. From the decision analytic point of view, the objective was to gather user experiences on the use of web-based group decision support systems in decision conferencing.