Building Decision Support Systems

Mark Wallace is a leader in discrete optimisation at the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia. He spent 21 years at the UK computer manufacturer ICL, moving from global marketing, to development, and finally to research.  At Imperial College London he led the Constraint Programming team, whose software was purchased by Cisco Systems.  In Australia, he founded the  company Opturion, to productise and deploy a constraint modelling system now used in Australia’s leading logistics companies. His research  tackles the integration of multiple optimisation techniques and algorithms and their  application to solving complex resource planning and scheduling problems.

“Decision support systems using MiniZinc is ideal for a wide spectrum of readers, from novice to expert users of MiniZinc and/or constraint/optimization programming. … This book was written so clearly and thoughtfully that I walked away feeling like I had a solid foundation for the topic. … newcomers to one or both will find the plentiful examples, thoughtful exercises, and relaxed writing style the best way to learn these concepts and software.” (Christopher Battiston, Computing Reviews, July 21, 2021)

• Motivation for IDS.- Modelling and Choices.- Examples of Industrial Decisions.- Problem Modelling in MiniZinc.- Algorithms and Complexity.- Constraint Classes.- Constraint Classes and Solvers.- Constraint Classes in MiniZinc.- Integrating Solvers with Search.- Search Control in MiniZinc.- Uncertainty.- IDSS for optimisation - the future.