On 4 October 2002 Thales Nederland, Technical University Delft, TNO Research Laboratory, and Amsterdam University confirmed their co-operation in the field of research into technology for intelligent systems by signing an agreement for the foundation of the DECIS Lab.
The co-operation of university research institutes and industry oriented research institutes such as TNO and Thales Research YNederland stimulates the fast transformation of new decision support technology into products actually required by the market. The industry and academic world together create the basis for a new generation of much more powerful decision support systems and techniques. The DECIS Lab fulfils a clear requirement of the market.

Decision support systems manage information in complex and chaotic situations
The DECIS (DElft Co-operation on Intelligent Systems) laboratory is located in the new technology park, Delftechpark, in Delft, the Netherlands. The purpose of the research of the DECIS lab is to improve decision support systems. These are computer based tools that are used every day in many different fields, such as motorway traffic regulation, air traffic control systems or the AEX index, for managing information, making plans, and taking decisions.
The main research area is collaborative decision making. This is the process where more persons must make an individual decision, which contributes to achieving of a joint mission. A good architecture for adaptive distributed information systems, a new vision of man-machine interaction and a better, more formal representation of the relevant aspects of changing situations, are all indispensable and feature as topics in the research projects as well.

Applications in more areas of the society
Our information centred society demands more and more of such systems. In particular complexity and performance, but also flexibility, adaptivity, scalability and integration with other subsystems, are technological challenges. Complex decision support systems are applied in a great number of areas, for instance traffic and transport, financial support, medical care, crisis and calamity control.

The research of the DECIS Lab aims to solve problems occurring in today's and tomorrow's everyday life. An example is a system that tries to dramatically reduce the congestion on motorways by providing a better planning and information tool to the individual drivers. Or systems that will help to avoid delays in railway transport systems. Or systems that use the present infrastructure to enlarge the capacity of the airspace and airports. These are examples of problems that fall within DECIS' research area. The robustness and performance of the solutions found by the lab are tested in practical situations.

A flying start
The DECIS Lab has a flying start with the Combined Systems project. This project has also been made possible thanks to a contribution of the CIC (Competing with ICT competencies) program office of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The project is an ICT breakthrough project that is carried out by the companies and institutes that co-operate In the DECIS Lab, with additional support of other IT companies such as Acklin B.V.

In the Combined Systems project, research is carried out to find out which technology and techniques that play a part in complex processes can be automated to a large extent. Attention is focussed on systems for crisis management and smart traffic.

Contacts
The ITS faculty of the Technical University Delft, the Science, Mathematics and Information Technology faculties of the University of Amsterdam, the Physical Electronics Lab and the Human Factors Institute of TNO and Thales Research YNederland co-operate in the DECIS lab.
The DECIS Lab is located at
Delftpark 24 in Delft,
the Netherlands.
Managing Director is
C.H.M. Nieuwenhuis.
Telephone: 00 31 15 2517860.
E-mail: cornelis.nieuwenhuis@nl.thalesgroup.com.