Abstract:
The SDS Knowledge Portal is developed to help people involved in a spatial decision process (decision makers, practitioners, researchers) gain a holistic view of the spatial decision process and better access to the vast amount of knowledge, information, and various resources that can be applied during spatial decision making. The objectives of the SDS Knowledge Portal include:
-Developing a
... systematic representation of the body of knowledge in the field of SDS;
-Promoting semantic clarity of commonly used terms within the SDS user community, in the areas including decision process, methods and techniques, functionalities of Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS);
-Organizing and facilitating access to a representative set of SDS resources including literature, tools and models, data sources, case studies, etc.
Spatial decision support is the computational or informational assistance for making better informed decisions about problems with a geographic or spatial component. This support assists with the development, evaluation and selection of proper policies, plans, scenarios, projects, interventions, or solution strategies in all application domains including ecosystem management. Spatial decision making faces various decision complexities such as:
-Spatial nature and temporal development of phenomena and processes;
-Complex multi-dimensional and heterogeneous data describing decision situations;
-Large or extremely large data sets that include data in numerical, map, image, text, and other forms;
-Large number of available alternatives or a need to generate decision alternatives "on the fly" according to the changing situation;
-Multiple participants with different and often conflicting interests;
-Multiple categories of knowledge involved, including expert knowledge and layman knowledge
[Summary provided by the Spatial Decision Support Consortium.] 
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