Papers selected from the tenth international forum on engineering decision making (IFED 2018)
In May 2018, the International Forum on Engineering Decision Making (IFED, http://ifedforum.weebly.com/) held its tenth forum in Lake Louise, Canada. The theme of the tenth forum ‘New challenges in decision making’ attracted 22 technical papers in various fields of engineering. For the purpose of this special issue of civil engineering and environmental systems, seven papers of general interest were selected, and their authors were invited to re-write and submit manuscripts to the journal.
As per IFED tradition, the objective of the themed forum was to outline current challenges related to engineering decision making, to discuss and to present possible solutions and applications, and to develop directions for future research in this field. Many presentations focused on the increasing complexity of systems used in decision making, and of the complexity of the decision-making approaches themselves. An important objective is that of system completeness, especially with regards to stakeholder interests and societal/community objectives. Together with increasing scope and complexity comes frustration with the communication of risk and with incomplete or misguided policy making.
The role of presumed experts and elected officials in decision making is often found to be fundamentally flawed, confrontational and counterproductive. Increasing complexity and transdisciplinary decision making often leads to big data problems. Several papers focused on its perils and its impact on risk-informed decision making.
Significant challenges are identified in the information domain, particularly when social systems are involved such as how to collect, understand, manage, and assess the quality of information in the new era of big data, artificial intelligence, and social media. The question of fake or fact has immediate implications on system modelling, completeness, and analysis approach. Adaptability is an important issue in today’s system modelling. The concept of risk can re-invent itself in the light of resilient and sustainable systems.
It is hoped that the seven papers in this Special Issue can contribute to finding an answer to the above-mentioned questions and reflect some of the challenges and applications associated with today’s engineering decision making.