What is a decision problem?

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new, method-independent framework for characterizing decision problems based on client-provided primitives, revealing a finite set of archetypal decision problems and support methods.

Contribution

It proposes a novel framework for defining decision problems that is independent of existing methods, emphasizing the fundamental primitives provided by clients.

Findings

Number of archetypal decision problems is finite

Framework is independent of existing decision analysis methods

Supports development of universal decision support methods

Abstract

This paper presents a general framework about what is a decision problem. Our motivation is related to the fact that decision analysis and operational research are structured (as disciplines) around classes of methods, while instead we should first characterise the decision problems our clients present us. For this purpose we introduce a new framework, independent from any existing method, based upon primitives provided by (or elicited from) the client. We show that the number of archetypal decision problems are finite and so the archetypal decision support methods.