Fifty years of decision analysis in operational research: A review

Publication “Fifty Years of Decision Analysis in Operational Research” in the European Journal of Operational Research

We review the development of research in Decision Analysis (DA) over the past fifty years. After presenting the axiomatic foundations and discussing the DA process, we start with value-focused thinking as a problem structuring method. We then analyze the model building phase, with a focus on graphical models for decision-making under uncertainty: belief networks, decision trees, and influence diagrams. Next, we analyze how DA research has dealt with uncertainty focusing on the areas of elicitation, aggregation, and evaluation. We then discuss sensitivity analysis, describing local and global techniques, from one-way sensitivity analysis to the value of information. Finally, we review the literature on information acquisition and discuss the role of information value in this context

Borgonovo, Emanuele; Jose, Victor Richmond R.; Knowlton, Morgan; Shachter, Ross; Siebert, Johannes U.; Ulu, Canan. “Fifty years of decision analysis in operational research: A review.” European Journal of Operational Research, 329(2), 2026, 355–377. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2025.05.023

Invited review on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of EURO (Association of European Operational Research Societies).