Decision support systems (DSS) are tools meant to assist in human decision-making (Turban and Aronson 2001). In an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world where information from human, software, and sensor sources can be overwhelming, DSS tools can serve as a bridge between the social and technical spheres. DSS tools offer support based on formal, technical approaches, but do so within a context that is often largely socially mediated.

Most DSS tools are assembled out of hardware devices and software constructs. The hardware devices, in the early twenty-first century, are dominated by digital computers and peripherals such as sensors, network infrastructure, and display and alerting devices meant to interact with these. Historically, many DSS were hard-wired to solve a specific task; control systems in nuclear power plants are an example. DSS hardware is increasingly dominated by physically distributed systems that make use of wired and...