Subjective Information Modelling

Abstract

Operational Research is viewed as an aid to decision making and it is believed that at present an increasing part of the decision maker's task is being shut off from the operational researcher because of the latter's inability to make a useful contribution. Particular problems are those in which the decision maker has to use his subjective judgement, intuition and foresight to enable him to make choices between alternatives. There has been a great deal of work over the last ten years in the field of technological forecasting in which attempts are made to qualify, quantify and aggregate such subjective judgements, for example, Delphi and Cross Impact Analysis.

The object of this paper is to present a framework within which these new procedures and the traditional O.R. approaches may be brought together. We feel that this may open the way for an improvement in decision making and an expanded role for O.R.