Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Issue-based information system
Summary
The issue-based information system (IBIS) is an argumentation-based approach to clarifying wicked problems—complex, ill-defined problems that involve multiple stakeholders. Diagrammatic visualization using IBIS notation is often called issue mapping.
IBIS was invented by Werner Kunz and Horst Rittel in the 1960s. According to Kunz and Rittel, "Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) are meant to support coordination and planning of political decision processes. IBIS guides the identification, structuring, and settling of issues raised by problem-solving groups, and provides information pertinent to the discourse."
Subsequently, the understanding of planning and design as a process of argumentation (of the designer with himself or with others) has led to the use of IBIS in design rationale, where IBIS notation is one of a number of different kinds of rationale notation. The simplicity of IBIS notation, and its focus on questions, makes it especially suited for representing conversations during the early exploratory phase of problem solving, when a problem is relatively ill-defined.
The basic structure of IBIS is a graph. It is therefore quite suitable to be manipulated by computer, as in a graph database.
The elements of IBIS are: issues (questions that need to be answered), each of which are associated with (answered by) alternative positions (possible answers or ideas), which are associated with arguments which support or object to a given position; arguments that support a position are called "pros", and arguments that object to a position are called "cons". In the course of the treatment of issues, new issues come up which are treated likewise.
IBIS elements are usually represented as nodes, and the associations between elements are represented as directed edges (arrows).
In 1988, Douglas E. Noble and Horst Rittel described the overall purpose of IBIS as follows: Issue-Based Information Systems are used as a means of widening the coverage of a problem.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.