Decision Support Systems (DSS)
This page is under development and will contain programs
and downloads for Decision Support Systems (DSS) developed by
William Silvert.
I will be presenting a talk on Decision Support for Stakeholders at the
biennial meeting of the International Environmental Modelling and Software
Society (iEMSs), namely their 2010 International Congress on Environmental
Modelling and Software called Modelling for Environment’s Sake, Fifth Biennial
Meeting, to be held in Ottawa, Canada, 5-8 July 2010. The written version of the
talk is available here,
and the PowerPoint presentation will be made available fairly soon.
Currently two sample DSS programs are available in the ZIP archive
DSS projects which you can download by clicking
on the link. This archive includes both the CSTT and SiteSelect programs, which
are described in the Read Me file, a copy of which is as follows:
Installation Instructions
This archive contains two programs illustrating the concept of a user-friendly
DSS for aquaculture site selection that can be run by any interested stakeholder
with no training or computer expertise.
The CSTT program is based on a requirement in Scottish law that the nutrients
from a fish farm should not produce excessive amounts of algae, expressed as an
Environmental Quality Standard (EQS) for chlorophyll. Models to do the necessary
calculation have been developed by Paul Tett and others with an Excel
spreadsheet, so this is simply an alternative implementation of their model.
This work was carried out as part of the ECASA project.
The SiteSelect model for calculating the carrying capacity of a water body for
shellfish culture is based on work by Aad Smaal and was developed in cooperation
with him.
To install each of the programs in this ZIP archive (CSTT, SiteSelect), open the
folder and run the SETUP file. This will install the executable program and will
create a Start Menu shortcut to it.
These programs were created with Microsoft Visual Basic 2010 Express and require
that the Microsoft .NET framework be installed on your computer. If the .NET
framework is not present it will automatically be downloaded frm the internet.
This should only happen the first time you execute one of the SETUP prgrams,
although with Microsoft products you can never be sure.
The program can be removed by using the Control Panel. For some reason the
program is buried deep within a system of hidden directories, but you can track
it down with the Search utility, being careful that the search includes hidden
files and directories. Just copy it to a more convenient location, because if
you move it then the link on the Start Menu will be broken.
For more information, bug reports, offers of generous financing or anything else
relevant to these programs, please contact Bill Silvert,
bill@silvert.org.
Some of this material, including the CSTT model, was developed for the ECASA
project. The work carried out for that project is described at
http://silvert.org/ECASA and can be seen
there. Earlier versions of some programs have been deleted, but this site
includes several documents and reports that may be of interest. In particular
there is some material on Fuzzy Decision Support.
Any feedback on the material would of course be greatly appreciated. Just
write to William Silvert.
