A visual interactive optimisation tool for analysing alternate locations for petroleum distribution facilities: Towards building an intelligent Decision-Support System (Q1001916)

Summary: This paper describes an intelligent Decision-Support System developed to analyse alternate locations for petroleum distribution so that delivery, storage and dispatching costs can be considered jointly with potential environmental risks. It consists of a visual, modelling environment that allows decision-makers to describe problems and a knowledge-based component that interacts with users to generate and explore alternatives during decision-making iterations. Given the run-up in petroleum costs and the disruptive effect of environmental phenomena such as hurricanes, such assessments may be beneficial where tradeoffs between environmental risks and operating costs must be evaluated.