Intelligent agent-assisted decision support systems: Integration of knowledge discovery, knowledge analysis, and group decision support

The integration of data mining techniques with decision support systems to assist in dealing with information overload has received increased attention and importance over recent years. However challenges remain regarding practical deployment and implementation of such integration, due to the increased complexity of decision making, system co-ordination and knowledge communication. It is the purpose of this paper to outline the issues necessary to be addressed in a practical decision support system that integrates data mining techniques. The paper will describe a novel architecture to support the co-operative decision process by utilizing event-driven and task-driven data mining agents, along with user assistant agents and a knowledge manager agent. An internet-based prototype for supporting marketing planning decisions is also presented to demonstrate the practicality and feasibility of the proposed intelligent agent-based decision support system architecture. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.