Title	2
	Preface	7
	Contents	10
	Decision Making in Complex Systems	15
	Introduction	15
	Modeling of Natural and Complex Phenomena	16
	Complex Systems: Definition and Principal Characteristics	16
	Decision Making and Decision Support Systems	19
	Decision Making	19
	The Evolution of Decision Support Systems	20
	Decision Making in Complex Systems	23
	Composite Decisions	25
	Motivation	27
	Frameworks for the Design of Decision Support Systems	27
	The Need for an Interdisciplinary Approach	28
	Multi-agent Paradigm for Complex Systems Modeling	29
	A Review on Frameworks for Decision SupportSystems	33
	Introduction	33
	Decision Support Systems in Academy and Research	34
	Agent-Based Frameworks for Decision Support Systems	42
	Frameworks for Multi-agent Systems Planning	42
	Software Tools for Multi-agent Systems Design and Implementation	50
	Comparison of Agent-Based Frameworks	57
	Design and Implementation of the DeciMaSFramework	60
	Introduction	60
	The DeciMaS Framework	61
	Approach towards Ontology Creation	61
	The General Structure of the System	63
	Description of the Ontological Basis of the Multi-agent Architecture	67
	The Domain of Interest Ontology	68
	The MAS Architecture Ontology	68
	The Tasks Ontology	70
	The Agent Ontology	70
	The Interactions Ontology	71
	The Distributed Meta-Ontology	72
	Data Mining Methods in the DeciMaS Framework	73
	Methods for Information Fusion and Preprocessing	76
	Methods for Knowledge Discovery	81
	Methods for Decision Generation	99
	A Case Study for the DeciMaS Framework	102
	Introduction	102
	Human Health Environmental Impact Assessment	103
	Environment and Human Health	103
	Environmental Impact Assessment	105
	Design of the Agent-Based Decision Support System	105
	Meta-ontology of the System	105
	Logical Levels of the ADSS	111
	The Principal Abstractions of the System	113
	Implementation in Jack	134
	Program Architecture	134
	Defining Agents in JACK	135
	Data and Results	152
	Introduction	152
	Data for Experiment	153
	Data Retrieval and Fusion	155
	Information Fusion and Preprocessing	157
	Detection and Elimination of Artifacts	157
	Filling of Missing Values	158
	Smoothing Results	159
	Normalization Results	160
	Results of the Correlation Analysis	160
	Decomposition Results	161
	Knowledge Discovery Results	163
	Regression Models	163
	Neural Network Models	165
	Models Obtained with the Group Method of Data Handling	168
	Committee Machines	170
	Environmental Impact Assessment Results	172
	Decision Making	174
	Discussion of the Experiment	178
	Conclusions	181
	Conclusions	181
	Future Work	183
	References	185