The scientific initiative called 'Decision Economics' (also known by the acronym DECON) is home to an engaged and vibrant research community that fosters and prioritises the cross-fertilisation of ideas through cross-disciplinary collaborations in the synergistic creation of new knowledge and research potential within science and broader publics. Working alongside internationally recognised researchers and scientists, DECON’s research programmes accommodate a broad range of subjects, interests, and disciplines, and welcome a wide spectrum of approaches, methods, and ideas revolving around decision-making rationale. If one looks around carefully, indeed, one will see that decision-making—and its outcomes, i.e., decisions—is a fact of life, namely, is involved in everyday life and relations, not just in economics, but also in the inherent nature of humans, as well as in social norms and social phenomena. Thus, much of the research on Decision Economics has hitherto been based on the underlying decision-theoretic foundations of economic behaviour, modelling the logic of discovery in Peircean (i.e., anti-Popperian) retroductive modes, and dealing with causal inferences before any aggregation can be properly operated and any correlation analysis can be scientifically defended. Fundamentally, this is about algorithmic social science forming DECON’s disciplining criterion—whether normative or descriptive—with prominent methodological approaches generating a theoretical framework that emphasises the importance of factors within the cognitive, social, and evolutionary domains and their interactions. Problematising the interactions between these domains helps give insights into our contemporaneity and provides a novel way of bridging the so-called great divide between the artificial and social sciences on the one hand, and the natural sciences on the other (not to mention humanities and human ecology). Adherence to a more scientific and conscious approach and implementation of decision-making has been—and still is—the key within DECON.

Through all of these scales and their various shapes concerned, the current global health and economic crises—which adds to the preceding, unresolved so-called Great Recession—have led to the re-emergence of complex inner problems and tough ecological conditions for humankind and its ecologies, creating an even more uncertain and unstable environment for all, and placing increasing pressure on the ability to both make effective decisions in a timely fashion and plan for the future. Undoubtedly, despite the persistence of motivations to apply agents and multi-agent systems, and although the bulk of data processed and predictive technology integral to modern business operations and business-critical activities, nearly all knowledge-based organisations these days are dealing with a lot of uncertainty and the 'what if' scenarios, very often without even the cause and effect being known or understood. However, due to a growing recognition of empirical and theoretical developments of bounded rationality and how they relate to the complexity and uncertainty of the environment, even in light of the co-occurrence of inherent complexities of natural and social phenomena such as a global pandemic, the debate around decision-making, decision support systems, and the related capacity to decide has shifted in focus to become more mindful and productive, and more thoughtful in solving problems. In this regard, many DECON’s spontaneously formed research groups are multi-disciplinary and often involve collaborations with partners in industry, academia, research institutions, and government, producing a substantial body of research jointly conducted over the years, under the banner of intercultural dialogue and capacity building as well.

In light of the foregoing, the international community that goes by the name of DECON has fostered an increasing spirit of collaboration, inclusion, mutual understanding, and engagement for all as time goes by. Today, DECON is a non-profit, person-centered research community devoted to the aspiration to blending science into intellectual social responsibility, as well as to sharing research and development progress in the broad spectrum of topics covered—ranging from cognitive through evolutionary to social sciences—and in the range of research perspectives, namely, methodological, theoretical, computational, experimental, and empirical studies.

DECON was founded in 2015 at the initiative of Edgardo Bucciarelli, Shu-Heng Chen, and J. Manuel Corchado. Its mission is to advance understanding of the research in social and cognitive sciences in order to find answers to forward-looking scientific questions, with the main purpose to further research in directions that are of broad interest in the spirit of both the cognitive foundations of economics developed by Herbert A. Simon and the mathematical foundations of the kind of economic theorising underpinned by the work of Alan M. Turing.


The special book of the past edition is available at

https://link.springer.com/conference/decon

Springer

General deadlines

  • Submissions

    15th March, 2024

  • Notification of acceptance

    26th April, 2024

  • Camera-ready

    17th May, 2024

  • Conference Celebration

    26th-28th June, 2024

Accommodation grants

BISITE Research Group (bisite.usal.es) offers 20 grants/awards to doctoral and young doctors.

Special Issues

Authors of selected papers from DECON will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to special issues in different journals:

Extended versions of selected papers will be published in the International Journal of Interactive Multimedia and Artificial Intelligence (ISSN: 1989 - 1660, JCR (2022): 3,6 (Q3))

Special Issue on the Journal Sensors: “Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud Computing Technologies for Smart Cities and Rural Areas: Sensing and Information Management Technologies” published in MDPI Sensors Journal (ISSN: 1424-8220, JCR (2022): 3.9 (Q1))

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue “Blockchain Applications in the Metaverse for Smart Cities” published in MDPI Smart Cities Journal (ISSN: 2624-6511, JCR (2022): 6.4 (Q1))

Authors of selected papers from PAAMS and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue "Advanced Architectures for Hybrid Edge Analytics Models on Adaptive Smart Areas" published in MDPI Electronics Journal (ISSN: 2079-9292, JCR (2022): 2.9 (Q2))

Special Issue on the Journal Future Internet: “Deep Learning in Recommender Systems” published in MDPI Future Internet Journal (ISSN: 1999-5903, JCR (2022): 3.4)

Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue “Security in the Internet of Things (IoT)” published in MDPI Future Internet Journal (ISSN: 1999-5903, JCR (2022): 3.4)

Authors of selected papers from PAAMS and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue “Advancements in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems and Digital Twins” published in MDPI Systems Journal (ISSN: 2079-8954, JCR (2022): 1.9 (Q2))

Authors of selected papers from DECON and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue published in ADCAIJ (ISSN: 2255-2863, JCR (2022): 1.4, JCI (2022): 0.09 (Q4)) indexed in DOAJ, ProQuest, Scholar, WorldCat, Dialnet, Sherpa ROMEO, Dulcinea, UlrichWeb, Emerging Sources Citation Index of Thomson Reuters, BASE y Academic Journals Database.

To Be Updated

International prizes awarded within DECON 2023

Best paper

"An aggregation rule under uncertainty" by Josep Freixas

Best paper application

"The vulnerability of euro area inflation to energy price fluctuations: a SVAR model approach" by Pierdomenico Duttilo

2023 Electronics
MDPI Best papers

"Pre-processing techniques and model aggregation for plant disease prevention" by Cédric Marco-Detchart, Jaime A. Rincon, Vicente Julian, and Carlos Carrascosa

"Cognitive reinforcement for enhanced post construction aiming fact-check spread" by Maria Araujo Barbosa, Francisco S. Marcondes, and Paulo Novais

"Dynamic parameterization of metaheuristics using a multi-agent system for the optimization of electricity market participation" by João Carvalho, Tiago Pinto, Juan M. Home-Ortiz, Brigida Teixeira, Zita Vale, and Ruben Romero

"Agrobots architecture and Agrobots-Sim simulator for dynamic agri-robot coordination" by Jorge Gutierrez-Cejudo, Marin Lujak, and Alberto Fernandez

MDPI Electronics Best Paper Awards
MDPI Systems Best Paper Awards

2023 Systems
MDPI Best papers

First Award: "Implementing a Blockchain-Powered Metadata Catalog in Data Mesh Architecture" by Anton Dolhopolov, Arnaud Castelltort, and Anne Laurent

Second Award: "Intelligent Systems in Healthcare: an Architecture proposal" by António Chaves, Larissa Montenegro, Hugo Peixoto, António Abelha, Luís Gomes, and José Machado

Third Award: "A Quantitative Methodology to Support Local Governments in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Actions" by Nikos Dimitropoulos, Elissaios Sarmas, Marcelo Lampkowski, and Vangelis Marinakis