A decision support system for holistic technology assessment

The objective of our decision support system is to provide its users with an independent, objective and credible assessment of both mature and emerging technologies, taking into account aggregated technical, economic, social, strategic, and environmental criteria. It is well known that such holistic technology assessment is a process rather than a set of techniques, and involves consultation and interaction between the scientific community, technology developers, investors and policy makers. Also, it is not a "one-off" process, but is iterative to take account of feedback, new developments and potential social and environmental implications of new technology. Therefore, it is of crucial importance to take advantage of emerging information technologies, especially artificial intelligence and decision support systems, and provide software assistance to this time-consuming and expensive process. The paper describes one effort, aiming at providing such assistance.