Decision support systems for environmental problems: Scientific approach, requirements of structure and data on specific purpose types

Decision support systems (dss) are used for the solution of a wide range of environmental related problems. In order to use dss more efficient it is necessary to divide them according to specific purpose types. Classic dss can be applied to situations in order to investigate the change of a system under certain one-time actions. Because of usual complex initial situations and huge demand of data it is necessary to integrate strategies of complexity-reduction into the decision making process. Normally this can be done by integrating human expert knowledge about the system into the decision making process. For repeating situations with similar initial conditions dynamic dss can be used. For these problems (e. g. environmental engineering processes) it is most often necessary to optimize the solutions under strict conditions. Dynamic dss shall therefore learn from previous decision makings in order to improve the decision making process. As a last type, operational dss are used to operate all kinds of technical equipment and systems. They must be designed to operate on high levels of reliability; sometimes their decisions have to meet legal requirements.