scholarly journals “Are we talking just a bit of water out of bank? Or is it Armageddon?” Front line perspectives on transitioning to probabilistic fluvial flood forecasts in England

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-232
Author(s):  
Louise Arnal ◽  
Liz Anspoks ◽  
Susan Manson ◽  
Jessica Neumann ◽  
Tim Norton ◽  
...  

Abstract. By showing the uncertainty surrounding a prediction, probabilistic forecasts can give an earlier indication of potential upcoming floods, increasing the amount of time available to prepare. However, making a decision based on probabilistic information is challenging. As part of the UK-wide policy's move towards forecast-based flood risk management, the Environment Agency (EA), responsible for managing risks of flooding in England, is transitioning towards the use of probabilistic fluvial forecasts for flood early warning. While science and decision-making are both individually progressing, there is still a lack of an ideal framework for the incorporation of new and probabilistic science into decision-making practices, and, respectively, the uptake of decision-makers' perspectives in the design of scientific practice. To address this, interviews were carried out with EA decision-makers (i.e. Duty Officers), key players in the EA's flood warning decision-making process, to understand how they perceive this transition might impact on their decision-making. The interviews highlight the complex landscape in which EA Duty Officers operate and the breadth of factors that inform their decisions, in addition to the forecast. Although EA Duty Officers already account for uncertainty and communicate their confidence in the forecast they currently use, the interviews revealed a decision-making process which is still very binary and linear to an extent, which appears at odds with probabilistic forecasting. Based on the interview results, we make recommendations to support a successful transition to probabilistic forecasting for flood early warning in England. These recommendations include the new system's co-design together with Duty Officers, the preparation of clear guidelines on how probabilistic forecast should be used for decision-making in practice, EA communication with all players in the decision-making chain (internal and external) that this transition will become operational practice and the documentation of this transition to help other institutes yet to face a similar challenge. We believe that this paper is of wide interest for a range of sectors at the intersection between geoscience and society. A glossary of technical terms is highlighted by asterisks in the text and included in Appendix A.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suci Handayani Handayani ◽  
Hade Afriansyah

Decision making is one element of economic value, especially in the era of globalization, and if it is not acceptable in the decision making process, we will be left behind. According to Robins, (2003: 173), Salusu, (2000: 47), and Razik and Swanson, (1995: 476) say that decision making can be interpreted as a process of choosing a number of alternatives, how to act in accordance with concepts, or rules in solving problems to achieve individual or group goals that have been formulated using a number of specific techniques, approaches and methods and achieve optimal levels of acceptance.Decision making in organizations whether a decision is made for a person or group, the nature of the decision is often determined by rules, policies, prescribed, instructions that have been derived or practices that apply. To understand decision making within the organization it is useful to view decision making as part of the overall administrative process. In general, individuals tend to use simple strategies, even if in any complex matter, to get the desired solution, because the solution is limited by imperfect information, time and costs, limited thinking and psychological stress experienced by decision makers.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbasali Ebrahimian ◽  
Seyed-Hossein Hashemi-Amrei ◽  
Mohammadreza Monesan

Introduction. Appropriate decision-making is essential in emergency situations; however, little information is available on how emergency decision-makers decide on the emergency status of the patients shifted to the emergency department of the hospital. This study aimed at explaining the factors that influence the emergency specialists’ decision-making in case of emergency conditions in patients. Methods. This study was carried out with a qualitative content analysis approach. The participants were selected based on purposive sampling by the emergency specialists. The data were collected through semistructured interviews and were analyzed using the method proposed by Graneheim and Lundman. Results. The core theme of the study was “efforts to perceive the acute health threats of the patient.” This theme was derived from the main classes, including “the identification of the acute threats based on the patient’s condition” and “the identification of the acute threats based on peripheral conditions.” Conclusions. The conditions governing the decision-making process about patients in the emergency department differ from the conditions in other health-care departments at hospitals. Emergency specialists may have several approaches to decide about the patients’ emergency conditions. Therefore, notably, the emergency specialists’ working conditions and the others’ expectations from these specialists should be considered.


2015 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentin Grecu

Abstract There is rarely an optimal solution in sustainable development but most frequently a need to build compromises between conflicting aspects such as economic, social and environmental ones and different expectations of stakeholders. Moreover, information is rarely available and precise. This paper will focus on how to use indicators to monitor sustainable development, integrating the information provided by many of them into a complex general sustainability index. Having this general indicator is essential for decision makers as it is very complicated to evaluate the performance of the organization based on multiple indicators. The objective of this paper is to find mathematical algorithms for simplifying the decision-making process by offering an instrument for the evaluation of the sustainability progress.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (7) ◽  
pp. A278
Author(s):  
A. Kalbasko ◽  
M. Andreykiv ◽  
A. Van Engen ◽  
O. Zorzi

2015 ◽  
Vol 713-715 ◽  
pp. 1769-1772
Author(s):  
Jie Wu ◽  
Lei Na Zheng ◽  
Tie Jun Pan

In order to reflect the decision-making more scientific and democratic, modern decision problems often require the participation of multiple decision makers. In group decision making process,require the use of intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid averaging operator (IFHA) to get the final decision result.


Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 810
Author(s):  
Zitai Xu ◽  
Chunfang Chen ◽  
Yutao Yang

In decision-making process, decision-makers may make different decisions because of their different experiences and knowledge. The abnormal preference value given by the biased decision-maker (the value that is too large or too small in the original data) may affect the decision result. To make the decision fair and objective, this paper combines the advantages of the power average (PA) operator and the Bonferroni mean (BM) operator to define the generalized fuzzy soft power Bonferroni mean (GFSPBM) operator and the generalized fuzzy soft weighted power Bonferroni mean (GFSWPBM) operator. The new operator not only considers the overall balance between data and information but also considers the possible interrelationships between attributes. The excellent properties and special cases of these ensemble operators are studied. On this basis, the idea of the bidirectional projection method based on the GFSWPBM operator is introduced, and a multi-attribute decision-making method, with a correlation between attributes, is proposed. The decision method proposed in this paper is applied to a software selection problem and compared to the existing methods to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Wasef Abuezhayeh ◽  
Les Ruddock ◽  
Issa Shehabat

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate and explain how organizations in the construction sector can enhance their decision-making process (DMP) by practising knowledge management (KM) and business process management (BPM) activities. A conceptual framework is developed that recognises the elements that impact DMP in terms of KM and BPM. The development of this framework goes beyond current empirical work on KM in addition to BPM as it investigates a wider variety of variables that impact DMP. Design/methodology/approach A case study is undertaken in the context of the construction industry in Jordan. A theoretical framework is developed and assessment of the proposed framework was undertaken through a questionnaire survey of decision-makers in the construction sector and expert interviews. Findings The outcomes of this research provide several contributions to aid decision-makers in construction organizations. Growth in the usage of KM and BPM, in addition to the integration between them, can provide employees with task-related knowledge in the organization’s operative business processes, improve process performance, promote core competence and maximise and optimise business performance. Originality/value Through the production of a framework, this study provides a tool to enable improved decision-making. The framework generates a strong operational as well as theoretical approach to the organizational utilization of knowledge and business processes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-231
Author(s):  
Stephanie Chitpin

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders engaging with distributed leadership practices. The process by which principals and other education leaders interact various school-based actors to arrive at a distributed decision-making process is addressed through this paper. The position taken suggests that leadership does not reside solely with principals or other education leaders, but sustains the view that the actions of various actors within a school setting contribute to fuller and more comprehensive accounts of distributed leadership. Design/methodology/approach While the application of rational/analytical approaches to organizational problems or issues can lead to effective decisions, dilemmas faced by principals are often messy, complex, ill-defined and not easily resolved through algorithmic reason or by the application of rules, as evidenced by the two stories provided by Agnes, a third-year principal in a small countryside elementary school in a small northeastern community, and by John, a novice principal in a suburb of a large Southwestern metropolitan area. Findings The value of the objective knowledge growth framework (OKGF) process is found in its ability to focus Agnes’s attention on things that she may have overlooked, such as options she might have ignored or information that she might have resisted or accepted, as well as innumerable preparations she might have neglected had she not involved all the teachers in her school. Research limitations/implications The implementation of the OKGF may appear, occasionally, to introduce unnecessary points along this route and may not be laboriously applied to all decision-making situations. However, the instinctively pragmatic solutions provided by this framework will often produce effective results. Therefore, in order to reduce potentially irrational outcomes, the systematic approach employed by the OKGF is preferable. The OKGF must be managed, implemented and sustained locally if it is to provide maximum benefits to educational decision makers. Practical implications Given the principals’ changing roles, it is abundantly clear that leadership practice can no longer involve just one person, by necessity, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how things could have been accomplished otherwise. Expecting the principal to single-handedly lead efforts to improve instruction is impractical, particularly when leadership may be portrayed as what school principals do, especially when other potential sources of leadership have been ignored or treated as secondary or unimportant because that leadership has not emanated from the principal’s office (Spillane, 2006). In this paper, the authors have striven to reveal how a perspective of distributed leadership, when used in conjunction with the objective knowledge growth framework, can be effective in assisting principals in resolving problems of practice. Social implications Different school leaders of varying status within the educative organization benefit from obtaining different answers to similar issues, as evidenced by John’s and Agnes’s leadership tangles. Lumby and English (2009) differentiate between “routinization” and “ritualization.” They argue, “They are not the same. The former erases the need for human agency while the latter requires it” (p. 112). The OKGF process, therefore, cannot provide school leaders with the “right” answers to their educative quandaries, simply because any two school leaders, facing the same issues, may utilize differing theories, solutions, choices or options which may satisfy their issues in response to their own individual contextual factors. Similarly, in a busy day or week, school leaders may be inclined to take the shortest distance between two points in the decision-making process; problem identification to problem resolution. Originality/value Should the OKGF process empower decision makers to obtain sound resolutions to their educative issues by assisting them in distancing themselves from emotions or confirmation biases that may distract them from resolving school problems, its use will have been worthwhile.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 8071
Author(s):  
Keith A. Puffer ◽  
Kris G. Pence

The first career interest inventory emerged in the late 1920s. The response options for the questions in the Strong Vocational Interest Blank included ‘like’ and ‘dislike.’ Both answers are emotional reactions. Regrettably, clients within the context of vocational counseling often regard negative feelings (e.g., dislikes) as inconsequential. Yet, negative emotionality can be adaptive and feasibly assist career decision-makers. In the literature on college students’ career development and emotional functioning, there is a paucity of information about how negative emotions advance the career decision-making process and how career decision-makers apply such knowledge. Hence, a sample of undergraduates (n = 256) was recruited to ascertain imaginable adaptive career decision-making benefits from negative affect. Employing a Mixed Methods-Grounded Theory methodology, the present study tabulated the negative emotional reactions of college students to vocations that were self- or computer-reported. In addition, their answers to two investigative questions about the selection of their negative emotions were analyzed. From the data, three negative meta-emotions emerged as reactions to participants’ reported occupations; four adaptive purposes for their selected negative affect were also discovered. A theoretical framework and applicative suggestions from the findings are presented.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 1235-1241
Author(s):  
Marina Badarovska Mishevska

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions, based on mathematics and psychology. The method was developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s and has been extensively studied and refined since then. It has particular application in group decision making and is used around the world in a wide variety of decision situation. Rather than prescribing a "correct" decision, the AHP helps decision makers choose one that best suits their goal and their understanding of the problem. The technique provides a comprehensive and rational framework for structuring a decision problem, for representing and quantifying its elements, for relating those elements to overall goals, and for evaluating alternative solutions. Decision making is the choice of one alternative, from two or more, to which the course of the activity is directed and the problem is solved. The decision-making process is a rational attempt by the manager to achieve the goals of the organizational unit. The decision-making process can be thought of as a "brain and nervous system" of an enterprise. Decisions are made when a person wants things to be different in the future. Given each specific situation, making the right decisions is probably one of the most difficult challenges for managers. Managers in day-to-day work deliver programmed and unprogrammed decisions that solve simple or complex problems. Simple decisions have an impact on the short-term performance of the enterprise, and complex decisions have an impact on the long-term future and success of the enterprise. Users of the AHP first decompose their decision problem into a hierarchy of more easily comprehended sub-problems, each of which can be analyzed independently. Once the hierarchy is built, the decision makers systematically evaluate its various elements by comparing them to each other two at a time, with respect to their impact on an element above them in the hierarchy. The AHP converts these evaluations to numerical values that can be processed and compared over the entire range of the problem. In this article, it is explained the application of the AHP method in order to evaluate and promote employees in the enterprise "X" with several criteria. The obtained results enable the manager to evaluate the employees in an objective way and make an objective decision for their promotion. Its application for selecting the best among employees, in their assessment and promotion, allows managers to use a specific and mathematical tool to support the decision. This tool not only supports and qualifies decisions, it also allows managers to justify their choice, as well as to simulate possible results.


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