Institutional and ad hoc DSS and their effective use

Abstract

The term decision support system (DSS) applies to the subset of management information systems that truly support decision-making processes. This term excludes structured decision systems that essentially present the appropriate decisions for management approval, as is the case in many inventory-control or billing systems. This paper differentiates between two classes of decision support systems: institutional DSS, which deal with decisions of a recurring nature, and ad hoc DSS, which deal with specific problems that are usually not anticipated or recurring. An understanding of these two classes of decision support systems facilitates making explicit both their common and different computational needs. This analysis has provided a basis for the development of computational facilities to support effectively their common needs. This paper briefly describes some of those computational facilities and illustrates their use in systems (institutional and ad hoc) which are being effectively used to support regional energy decisions in New England.