A collaborative spatial decision support system applied to site selection problems

Nowadays, urban areas face many challenging issues; one of the most demanding is site selection. Strategic site selection issues are typically complex problems that require consideration of multiple alternatives (sites), multiple criteria and multiple decision-makers with conflicting interests, preferences and desires. In this perspective we propose a new decision making framework based on three areas of high importance: multi-agent systems, geographic information system and multiple-criteria decision analysis. These three tools are combined in a manner so that the shortcoming of one tool is complemented by the strength of the others. To assist the decision makers in selecting the compromise alternative from a number of feasible alternatives, the proposed decision support system will be enriched with a protocol of negotiation based on argumentation approach, which allows agents (decision makers) to exchange complex justification positions rather than just simple proposals, this property of argumentation protocols can lead to faster and beneficial agreements to the group.