Computers and Decision Making

Abstract Historically, computers have been most useful as decision aids when applied to well-structured problems. Since many of the problems planners confront may be more accurately classified as semistructured or unstructured—“squishy”—problems, in the past twenty-five years planners' success with the use of computers has been spotty. Much has changed during those years, however, and many of the difficulties experienced by planners can be avoided now. This article reviews the many different, though often interrelated, lines of advance that have resulted in application of computer-based decision aids to a much broader range of problems than previously possible, and that make such aids available and increasingly acceptable to those with little or no computer expertise.