This volume of Annals of Information Systems will acknowledge the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the International Society for Decision Support Systems (ISDSS) by documenting some of the current best practices in teaching and research and envisioning the next twenty years in the decision support systems field. The volume is intended to complement existing DSS literature by offering an outlet for thoughts and research particularly suited to the theme of describing the next twenty years in the area of decision support.

Several subthemes are planned for the volume. One subtheme draws on the assessments of internationally known DSS researchers to evaluate where the field has been and what has been accomplished. A second subtheme of the volume will be describing the current best practices of DSS research and teaching efforts. A third subtheme will be an assessment by top DSS scholars on where the DSS discipline needs to focus in the future. The tone of this volume is one of enthusiasm for the potential contributions to come in the area of DSS; contributions that must incorporate an understanding of what has been accomplished in the past, build on the best practices of today, and be integrated into future decision making practices.

Decision Support Systems (DSS) are a specific class of computerized information system that supports business and organizational decision-making activities. It is typically an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from raw data, documents, personal knowledge, and/or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions. Traditionally, they address strategic and long-term decision situations, but due to the dynamic nature of such conditions as natural disasters, military operations, or even global economics, it is equally important to study and propose approaches for making time-critical operational decisions in real time. The complexity, multiple goals and various time-critical imperatives associated with such decision support increases the importance of identifying, modeling, learning and managing the right context for making an efficient decision.

This book will explore issues associated with the design and use of real-time DSS in ubiquitous computing environments. It will cover theoretical and applied research regarding systems which support real-time decisions "on the move" and will consider the current state, challenges in design, theory, practice, methods and techniques, new developments, and applications of computing technologies to support extracting the context of real-time decision processes and decision-making by individuals, groups and organizations in time-critical situations. Specific case studies will be presented, but the book will focus on the role of context for time-critical decision support. In particular, it will address the question of how extracting, interpreting, predicting and managing context-based information can assist in real time decision support. The challenges of context modeling and management as a component to knowledge management for decision making and support will be also addressed.

The book will present chapters which describe concrete and constructive research results on the above topics as well as more broad theoretical entries about the role of context in decision-making and support, providing a comprehensive review of the available approaches to mobile real time decision support. The topics covered in the book will include theoretical aspects and application case studies of:

• Context-based decision-making methods and tools;
• Contextualizing information for time-critical decision making;
• Processes and procedures of extracting contextual information for decision support;
• Identifying context in the decision making/support process;
• Managing the contextualization process of decision making/support;
• Dynamic filtering of information for real-time decision making and support;
• Case studies of prototyped and commercially available real-time DSS systems.

This AoIS volume will appeal immediately to researchers and academics in decision sciences, in information system design, and in context research.