Conflict
resolution is of significance to engineers and other decision makers
because of the increasing importance of social and political influences
in engineering decision making. For example, when designing a large
scale engineering project such as a nuclear power reactor complex, the
engineer must ensure that the undertaking is not only physically,
environmentally, financially and economically feasible, but also
socially and politically viable. Key objectives of conflict resolution
are to gain a better comprehension about the strategic aspects of a
given dispute and thereby make more informed and fairer decisions. A
formal conflict model provides an effective medium for systematically
recording and studying the conflict while the results of a stability
analysis based on the model furnish predictions of compromise solutions
and suggest where cooperation with others may lead to “win/win”
outcomes. Current interesting research problems being studied by
members of the Conflict Analysis Group
include further developing the graph model for conflict resolution,
expanding the decision support system GMCRII, collecting a knowledge
base of engineering conflict applications, experimenting with
techniques for eliciting ordinal preference information, handling
unknown preferences, taking into account strength of preference,
tracing the evaluation of a conflict from a status quo state to a
desirable equilibrium, modeling emotions, determining the roles of
conflict resolution in risk management, and designing procedures for
executing coalition analyses. Senior undergraduate and graduate
students are most welcome to take SYDE 533 Conflict Resolution,
for credit or audit in order to learn about the theory and practice of
formal modelling approaches to conflict resolution as well as be
exposed to exciting research developments in this important field of
study. An advanced version of this course is also available as SYDE 730: Conflict Resolution.