The current project is a joint-development

involving ALL the Group Members

and the Coordination Board:

Pascale Zaraté Fatima Dargam Rita Ribeiro
IRIT / INPT - ENSIACET - GI SimTech Simulation Technology UNINOVA - CA3
(France) ILTC (Austria / Brazil) (Portugal)


Social Networks

• Represent different real-life
communities

• Play an important role in
determining:
• the way problems are
solved;

• the way organizations are
run;

• degree to which individuals
succeed in achieving their
goals.

Social Networks Analysis

• The attributes of individuals (actors) are less
important than their relationships with other actors
within the network.

• Focus How the connection structure affects the
individuals.

• EWG-DSS Weighted Collaboration / Affiliation
Network (authors connected by co-authoring)


104 Members (as of June 2009)
EWG-DSS members:
Ana Respício; Antonio Rodrigues; M.Eugênia Captivo; Tei Barnhart; Alexandre Gachet;
Antonio Martinez; Albert Angehrn; Alessio Ishizaka; Ana Maria Rosa Borges; Arijit
Bhattacharya; Barbo Back; Bertrand Mareschal; Boris Delibasic ; C. Makropoulos;
Jacques Calmet; Carlos Antunes; Carlos Bana e Costa; Christer Carlsson; Asis Kr.
Chattopadhyay; Caludia Loebbecke; Csaba Csaki; Dobrila Petrovic; Dorien De Tombe;
Dirk Kenis; Andreas Edelmayer ; Eduardo Natividade Jesus; Fatima Dargam; Fréféric
Adam; Christophe Fagot; Franck Tetard; Frits Claassen; Frieder Stolzenburg; Peter
Gelleri; Gilles Coppin; Inès Saad; Ilya Ashikhmin; Kwakkel Jan; J. Jassbi;Tawfik
Jelassi; Jeremy Forth ; Jorge Souza; Joao Lourenco; Johannes Leitner; Jean Pierre
Brans; Jochen Pfalzgraf; Jorge Pinho de Sousa; Jose Vincente Segura; Li Ching Ma;
Lourdes Canos; Ladislav Lukas; Marija Najika; Marko Bohannec; Philip Powel; Michael
Bruhn Barfod; Miklos Biros; Mikael Mihalevich; Jose Maria Moreno Jimenez; Maria
Theiner; Natalio Krasnogor; Nikolaos F. Matsatsinis; Olaf Herden; Paul Hasenohr;
Paulo Leonco; Peter Keenan; Philippe Lenca; Pierre Kunsch; Suzanne Pinson; Jean
Charles Pomerol; Paulo Ramos; Rita Ribeiro; Caroline Rieder; Rudolf Vetschera;
Camille Rosenthal Sabroux; Susanne Stadler ; Frantisek Sudzina; Maria Theiner;
Thomas Soboll; Alexis Tsoukias; W. Walker; Yi Yang; Pascale Zaraté; ...

• many of us … working on Decision Making since 1989

• Some of the applied DSS developed by the group members:
Planning Distance Education & Distance Learning; Medical learning Environment;
Process Modelling Design; Aerospace Knowledge Bases; Validation Requirements;
Social Simulation; Marketing & Production; Forecasting; Scheduling Systems; etc...


Main Topics of Research within the Group:

• Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)
• GDSS: Group-DM; NDSS: Negotiation-DM;
• Distributed Models of Decision Making
• Applications in Collaborative Decision Making & Analysis
• Models for Decision Analysis (DA) in Group Decision Making
- Evaluation of the Collaboration Levels for DM & DA
- Facilitation of Group Coordination and Group Communication

• Knowledge Management & Context supporting Decision Making
• Knowledge Management as a Collaboration Model
- Knowledge-intensive Collaborative Models
- Context-based Decision Systems

• Network & Web-based Systems
• Network-based Collaborative Decision Making
• New Methodologies and Technology for GDSS

• Aggregation & Fuzzy Algorithms for Decision Making
• Knowledge-Based (Intelligent) Decision Systems
• Applied Decision Support Systems (including MIS)


Motivation:
Importance and relevance of
analysing and representing the
various relationships that
academically link the current
104 members of the DSS
EURO Working Group
EWG-DSS.

Main Objectives:
Evaluate the group’s collaboration dynamics since its foundation (1989).

As a by-product, we aim to encourage new research and promote further
collaboration among the academic members of the group in common
projects and joint-publications


The EWG-DSS Social-Academic Network
(the group in focus)

Nodes: authors; publications; projects; research areas
Nodes
Ties / Relations: collaborations; joint-projects; Journal-editions; ...

• Distances among the
members of the group.

• Major and minor areas
of research concentration
& interaction in the group.

• New tendencies & working areas.

• New opportunities for cooperation.


Methodology

Weighted Graphs Methods

Software Frameworks:

NWB Network Workbench

PAJEK Network


Download Source Code
NWB repository: http://nwb.slis.indiana.edu/svn/nwb


Pajek (Spider in Slovene)
Program for Large Network Analysis

Pajek is a Windows Program
for networks analysis & visualization

Authors:
Vladimir Batagelj; Andrej Mrvar &
Matjaž Zaveršnik.

Available for non-commercial use:
http://pajek.imfm.si/doku.php


Initial Implementation Phases

Acquisition & Extraction Processes:
Organizing the input data in matrix format:
authors x papers, papers x topics
Creating the network input files with
nodes and labels
Transformation Process:
Using Jaccard Similarity Measure to
obtain output files to be analyzed
graphically and statistically by
Pajek and NWB.

Implementing the Network

The EWG-DSS Network V.1.0 :

Input from 70 EWG-DSS members;
Period of 19 years [1989 – 2008];
1350 Publications;
34 extracted Topics of Research Areas


70 Authors / Members of the EWG-DSS:
Ai Author Name Ai Author Name Ai Author Name
A1 Arijit Bhattacharya A25 Fréféric Adam A49 Pascale Zaraté

A2 Adla Abdelkader A26 Frieder Stolzenburg A50 Peter Gelleri

A3 Albert A. Angehrn A27 Frits Claassen A51 Peter Keenan

A4 Alessio Ishizaka A28 Ilya Ashikhmin A52 Philip Powel

A5 Alexis Tsoukias A29 Inès Saad A53 Philippe Lenca

A6 Ana Respício A30 J.Jassbi A54 Pierre Kunsch

A7 Antonio Jimenez Martinez A31 Jacques Calmet A55 Rita Ribeiro

A8 Asis Kr. Chattopadhyay A32 Jean Charles Pomerol A56 Rudolf Vetschera

A9 Bertrand Mareschal A33 Jean Pierre Brans A57 Sanja Petrovic

A10 Bojan Srdjevic A34 João Carlos Lourenço A58 Suzanne Pinson

A11 Boris Delibasic A35 Jochen Pfalzgraf A59 Tawfik Jelassi

A12 Caludia Loebbecke A36 Johannes Leitner A60 Thanasis Spyridakos

A13 Camille Rosenthal Sabroux A37 Jorge Freire de Sousa A61 Yi Yang

A14 Carlos Antunes A38 Jorge Pinho de Sousa A62 Thomas Soboll

A15 Carlos Bana e Costa A39 Jose Maria Moreno Jimenez A63 BAZZANA Flavio

A16 Christer Carlsson A40 Ladislav Lukas A64 Guilan Kong

A17 Csaba Csaki A41 Li Ching Ma A65 Jason Papathanasiou

A18 Dirk Kenis A42 Luís Cândido Dias A66 Mikael Mihalevich

A19 Dobrila Petrovic A43 Marko Bohannec A67 Taghezout Noria

A20 Dorien De Tombe A44 Michael Bruhn Barfod A68 Warren Elliott Walker

A21 Eduardo Manuel Natividade A45 Miklos Biros A69 José Vicente segura Heras
Jesus

A22 Fatima Dargam A46 Natalio Krasnogor A70 Antonio Rodrigues

A23 Franck Tetard A47 Nguyen Dinh Pham

A24 Frantisek Sudzina A48 Olaf Herden


34 Topics of Research extracted from the 1350 Publications:

# Research Topic # Research Topic
1 Business Models 18 Knowledge Management
2 Collaboration Dynamics 19 Multi-Agent Systems
Cooperative Decision Support
3 20 Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding
Systems
Management Learning and
4 Decision Analysis 21
Decision Making
5 Decision Aiding Process 22 Network
6 Data Mining 23 Operations research
7 Decision Support Systems 24 Preference analysis
8 Evaluation 25 Performance Evaluation
9 E-Business 26 Preference Modelling
Production Planning and
10 Entreprise resource Planning 27
Scheduling
11 Expert Systems 28 Supply Chain Management
12 Economic Theory 29 Sustainable Development
13 Fuzzy Sets 30 Social Networks
Group Decision and
14 31 Simulation Systems
Negotiation
Systems Software Evaluation and
15 Information Retrieval 32
Selection
16 Information Systems 33 Virtual Communities
Information and
17 Telecommunication 34 Context
Technology


Authors Publications
P1 P2 .... Pm
A1 APij
A2
....
...
...
An

Boolean Matrix R(A,P) relating authors and their publications.

Papers Topics
T1 T2 .... Tm
P1 PTij
P2
....
...
...
Pn

Boolean Matrix S(P,T) relating publications and their topics.


Network Visualizations
Visualization of the Author_AP network, graphically represented in PAJEK.
Ai = Authors; for i = {1,…, 70}



Visualization of the
Author_AP.net,
related by the collaboration
in publications.

Network graphically
represented in NWB, via the
Kamada Kawai algorithm.



NWB Radial Graph
Visualization of the Publ_AP
network, showing the
collaboration among the
authors, via their joint-
publications.

Pj = Publications
of the authors
for j = {1,…, 1350}


Visualization of the Publ_AP network, graphically represented in PAJEK.


Visualization of the Publ_AP represented in PAJEK, with separate components


Visualization of the Topics_AT represented in PAJEK,
showing the connections among the 34 topics with relation to the authors’ areas of research.


Visualization of the Publ_PT represented in PAJEK, with separate components,
showing the relationships among the publications and topics of research

1350
Publications

34 Topics


NWB Radial Graph Visualization of the Authors_AT network,
showing the collaboration among the authors, with relation to their common research topics.


Social-Academic Network EWG-DSS
Concluding Remarks

The collaboration relationships show:

1. How the members relate to each other in terms of topics of research;

2. What are the most relevant topics of research within in the group;

3. The relevant statistical data concerning our publications


Social-Academic Network EWG-DSS
Concluding Remarks

The collaboration relationships also show:

• How many external collaborators (co-authors not in EWG-DSS)
exist and indirectly participate in the EWG-DSS


Social-Academic Network - EWG-DSS
Concluding Remarks

In further versions of the Network, we aim at:
• Analyze the network with more accurate results, including
missing input data

• Encourage the isolated nodes of absent connections
to become, at a first stage, nodes of
“weak connections” within the net;

• Reduce/eliminate the isolated nodes;

• Bring the external collaborators to
the EWG-DSS Network


Concluding Remarks

powerful tool
to
identify the EWG-DSS group interaction
&
to
provide a useful feedback for further
collaboration in joint-research


Concluding Remarks

As coordinators, we also encourage other EURO
WGs to follow this example and try to identify the
cooperation of their groups.

•Participation
•Research production in joint-work.


EWG-DSS IRIT List-Server


http://ewgdss.wordpress.com/


51 Members…

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Thanks
for your attention!


Presentation-Social Academic Network EWG-DSS