Decision support and optimisation

Decision support and optimisation lie at the core of the design process; major elements in a designers role are to make decisions in the face of conflicting requirements and to seek near optimal solutions to heavily constrained multi-attribute problems.

This is an extremely active field of research, both in the EDC and in the wider design community. The EDC’s programme includes both integration and application of a broad portfolio of technologies in the made to order sector and development of the basic tools in key area.

Some of the major elements of the research activity in this area include:

  • Development of multi-criteria decision making tools.
  • Capture and re-use of knowledge to inform the decision making process.
  • Application of genetic algorithms, simulated annealing and other adaptive search techniques to optimisation problems, including spatial layout in constrained environments.

Contact the EDC

For further details of the EDC's activities please get in touch with us through our contact page.

Commercial Research at Newcastle University

A full list of commercially available research facilities for Newcastle University can be found on the Services for Business web pages.

Highlight for April 2008

Integrated Modelling for Strategic Planning

Strategic planning for sustainability requires complex systems to be modelled.

Because of this complexity, it is unrealistic to develop new and comprehensive models for each of the numerous possible situations likely to be encountered. Many models already exist ...

more ...

Previous highlights

About the Events Diary

Upcoming seminars

The EDC often hosts, arranges or is associated with a wide variety of seminars related to its activities.

These seminars (often in association with an engineering institute) are always open to students and staff at the university and often to the public.

Upcoming events will be listed on this website in the future. Please check back from time to time for updates.