Making decisions in an unstable world

Decision-making is a central human capacity and a vital component of complex artificial systems. Decisions often need to be made when the environment is changing, where information is limited or unreliable, when time is of the essence, and in the presence of other decision makers. Despite this complexity, humans and, to a limited extent, artificial systems operate successfully in a wide range of such situations.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK (EPSRC) has awarded the University of Bristol £1.6million to establish an inter-disciplinary centre to research decision-making in an unstable world, which will build on current world-class research on decision making which is carried out throughout the University. We will carry out experiments with human volunteers and build models to understand how decisions are made. The resulting models will then be applied to a range of real life problems.