TID. DECISION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES.

This program focuses on decision making processes, covering from a multidisciplinary perspective any mathematical model explaining every step. Here, a decision process is understood in the widest sense, ranging from social to individual decision making and considering both subjective and technical aspects of the process, including modelization, analytic, predictive or strategic approaches, and also numerical, logical or instrumental techniques. Furthermore, in our approach an individual may be meant a whole organisation.

Taking into account the obvious increase of the vulgarisation of the research on related topics like Statistics, Operational Research, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Mathematics or Computer Science in the last 20 years, it should be noted that the development of such mathematical disciplines has been accompanied with a relevant advance in other technological, social or human areas. It must be noted that the presence and perception of the mathematics and their professionals in the society is very good. Society knows the power of mathematical research because the use of new technologies for the management of information and the urgent need of solutions for the problems of search and analysis of a frequently excessive amount of information -which will not produce any knowledge until properly arranged- that our society is facing. Thus, mathematics for information and decision making technologies are a potential social and economic stimulus for any field of any technological advanced society.

A first set of objectives deals with problems of preference and knowledge representation at the presence different types of risk. A second set faces the solution of a decision making process taking into account the representations previously considered.

Thirdly, we aim the general problems of development and optimization of algorithms -considering all the laying computational problems- for the search of these solutions. A fourth block is the design and -with special emphasis on validation problems- of software. The progress on these four blocks will produce publications in first rate journals and in proceedings of first class conferences; this is already a usual practice of all groups involved in our program, all of them enjoying external funding and international recognition. The fifth block is the application to concrete problems and the transference of the acquired knowledge to the industry, what will require the collaboration of external public and private institutions. Finally, a sixth block will emphasize the popularization at all educational levels with the creation of all kind of learning materials and helping to the formation of future university students. The curricula of the researchers of our group show the need of wide mathematical education and permanent communication with applied disciplines.

At a first step we will promote the professional training program of the University with periodical meetings with our previous contacts with business firms. We propose to open the program with presentation meeting for previous academic and business contacts and to launch a home page to attract new internal and external collaborators.

The program requires some extra funding to invite professors and professionals from other institutions and to organize internal and external meetings with other research groups and business firms.

Keywords: Knowledge representation, Decision Making Theory, Bayesian methods, Multicriteria Decision, Multi-Criteria decision, Fuzzy Risk, Algorithmic Complexity, Computational Algebra, Software Design, Formal Software Analysis.