SCALINTEL (Decision Support System for Scheduling with Scalable Intelligence) is a project supported by FCT that started in January/2002 with the duration of 3 years. Recent studies point out to some constraints in Decision Support Systems (DSS) for Scheduling. The first is the difficulty in an intelligent interaction between the user and the DSS. Current DSS are not able to explain their reasoning or proposed solutions, like an Expert System, since this is very difficult for most of the scheduling algorithms. The second limitation is that DSS should not restrict to follow the user-interaction paradigm – they should infer what their users are trying to do and learn from the observation. Finally, decision-making is usually a process involving many people, advising for different aspects of the problem, which points for the need of Group DSS (GDSS). SCALINTEL will contribute with the following originalities: new versions of scheduling algorithms oriented for intelligent interaction; use of AI Inductive Logic Programming learning method for user intention recognition; and use of Multi-Agent Systems paradigm for modelling GDSS.

Carlos Ramos is the project leader and the total budget is € 80000.