INDE 7397 Decision Making for Public Safety
Have you ever had a difficult decision to make? If so, did you wish for a straightforward way to keep all the different issues clear? The objective of decision analysis is to help a decision maker think hard about the specific problem at hand, including the overall structure of the problem as well as her or his preferences and beliefs. The purpose of studying decision-analysis techniques is to be able to represent real-world problems using models that can be analyzed to gain insight and understanding. Using this insight and understanding, best decisions can be made.
This course covers modern decision analysis techniques as applied to public safety operations. In general, the course examines the concepts and tools for managing risk and making decisions as key components of the systems engineering process.
The first part of the course focuses on modelling decisions. The course will start with an introduction to decision analysis. We will follow with a discussion of elements of decision problems. Next, we will cover how to structure decisions and make choices by using influence diagrams and decision trees. We will also discuss sensitivity analysis as it relates to the overall decision making strategy, and introduce a variety of graphical sensitivity analysis techniques.
The second part of the course deals with modelling uncertainty. We will first review probability theory basics. Next, we will discuss value of information, modelling preferences, risk attitudes, expected utility theory, and trade-off analysis.
This course will also include discussions of case studies related to public safety applications.
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