It is a great privilege and pleasure to write a foreword for a book honor ing Wolfgang Gaul on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Wolfgang Gaul is currently Professor of Business Administration and Management Science and the Head of the Institute of Decision Theory and Management Science, Faculty of Economics, University of Karlsruhe (TH), Germany. He is, by any measure, one of the most distinguished and eminent scholars in the world today. Wolfgang Gaul has been instrumental in numerous leading research initia tives and has achieved an unprecedented level of success in facilitating com munication among researchers in diverse disciplines from around the world. A particularly remarkable and unique aspect of his work is that he has been a leading scholar in such diverse areas of research as graph theory and net work models, reliability theory, stochastic optimization, operations research, probability theory, sampling theory, cluster analysis, scaling and multivariate data analysis. His activities have been directed not only at these and other theoretical topics, but also at applications of statistical and mathematical tools to a multitude of important problems in computer science (e.g., w- mining), business research (e.g., market segmentation), management science (e.g., decision support systems) and behavioral sciences (e.g., preference mea surement and data mining). All of his endeavors have been accomplished at the highest level of professional excellence.

Data mining deals with finding patterns in data that are by user-definition, interesting and valid. It is an interdisciplinary area involving databases, machine learning, pattern recognition, statistics, visualization and others. Decision support focuses on developing systems to help decision-makers solve problems. Decision support provides a selection of data analysis, simulation, visualization and modeling techniques, and software tools such as decision support systems, group decision support and mediation systems, expert systems, databases and data warehouses. Independently, data mining and decision support are well-developed research areas, but until now there has been no systematic attempt to integrate them. Data Mining and Decision Support: Integration and Collaboration, written by leading researchers in the field, presents a conceptual framework, plus the methods and tools for integrating the two disciplines and for applying this technology to business problems in a collaborative setting.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Decision Support Systems Technology, ICDSST 2015, held in Belgrade, Serbia, in May 2015. The theme of the event was “Big Data Analytics for Decision-Making” and it was organized by the EURO (Association of European Operational Research Societies) working group of Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS). The eight papers presented in this book were selected out of 26 submissions after being carefully reviewed by at least three internationally known experts from the ICDSST 2015 Program Committee and external invited reviewers. The selected papers are representative of current and relevant research activities in the area of decision support systems, such as decision analysis for enterprise systems and non-hierarchical networks, integrated solutions for decision support and knowledge management in distributed environments, decision support system evaluations and analysis through social networks, and decision support system applications in real-world environments. The volume is completed by an additional invited paper on big data decision-making use cases.

Fiduciary responsibilities and related court-imposed liabilities have forced investors to assess market conditions beyond gut level, resulting in the development of sophisticated decision-making tools. Roger Brown's use of historical real estate data enables him to develop tools for gauging the impact of circumstances on relative risk. His application of higher level statistical modeling to various aspects of real estate makes this book an essential partner in real estate research. Offering tools to enhance decision-making for consumers and researchers in market economies of any country interested in land use and real estate investment, his book will improve real estate market efficiency. With property the world's biggest asset class, timely data on housing prices just got easier to find and use. Excellent mixture of theory and application Data and database analysis techniques are the first of their kind

The availability of big data, low-cost commodity hardware, and new information management and analytic software have produced a unique moment in the history of data analysis. The convergence of these trends means that we have the capabilities required to analyze astonishing data sets quickly and cost-effectively for the first time in history. They represent a genuine leap forward and a clear opportunity to realize enormous gains in terms of efficiency, productivity, revenue, and profitability especially in digital marketing. Data plays a huge role in understanding valuable insights about target demographics and customer preferences. From every interaction with technology, regardless of whether it is active or passive, we are creating new data that can describe us. If analyzed correctly, these data points can explain a lot about our behavior, personalities, and life events. Companies can leverage these insights for product improvements, business strategy, and marketing campaigns to cater to the target customers. Big Data Analytics for Improved Accuracy, Efficiency, and Decision Making in Digital Marketing aids understanding of big data in terms of digital marketing for meaningful analysis of information that can improve marketing efforts and strategies using the latest digital techniques. The chapters cover a wide array of essential marketing topics and techniques, including search engine marketing, consumer behavior, social media marketing, online advertising, and how they interact with big data. This book is essential for professionals and researchers working in the field of analytics, data, and digital marketing, along with marketers, advertisers, brand managers, social media specialists, managers, sales professionals, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students looking for the latest information on how big data is being used in digital marketing strategies.

Accessible and concise, this exciting new textbook examines data analytics from a managerial and organizational perspective and looks at how they can help managers become more effective decision-makers. The book successfully combines theory with practical application, featuring case studies, examples and a ‘critical incidents’ feature that make these topics engaging and relevant for students of business and management. The book features chapters on cutting-edge topics, including: • Big data • Analytics • Managing emerging technologies and decision-making • Managing the ethics, security, privacy and legal aspects of data-driven decision-making The book is accompanied by an Instructor’s Manual, PowerPoint slides and access to journal articles. Suitable for management students studying business analytics and decision-making at undergraduate, postgraduate and MBA levels.

This book highlights cutting-edge applications of machine learning techniques for disaster management by monitoring, analyzing, and forecasting hydro-meteorological variables. Predictive modelling is a consolidated discipline used to forewarn the possibility of natural hazards. In this book, experts from numerical weather forecast, meteorology, hydrology, engineering, agriculture, economics, and disaster policy-making contribute towards an interdisciplinary framework to construct potent models for hazard risk mitigation. The book will help advance the state of knowledge of artificial intelligence in decision systems to aid disaster management and policy-making. This book can be a useful reference for graduate student, academics, practicing scientists and professionals of disaster management, artificial intelligence, and environmental sciences.

Webber, Henry Y. Zheng, Ying Zhou

Data Science for Business and Decision Making covers both statistics and operations research while most competing textbooks focus on one or the other. As a result, the book more clearly defines the principles of business analytics for those who want to apply quantitative methods in their work. Its emphasis reflects the importance of regression, optimization and simulation for practitioners of business analytics. Each chapter uses a didactic format that is followed by exercises and answers. Freely-accessible datasets enable students and professionals to work with Excel, Stata Statistical Software®, and IBM SPSS Statistics Software®. - Combines statistics and operations research modeling to teach the principles of business analytics - Written for students who want to apply statistics, optimization and multivariate modeling to gain competitive advantages in business - Shows how powerful software packages, such as SPSS and Stata, can create graphical and numerical outputs