Abstract
Nowadays, the shift towards cloud computing services is rapidly increasing. Organizations are leaning more towards adopting cloud-based services to increase their computation and processing power with reduced operational and maintenance costs. Similarly, being in the information age where huge amounts of information are generated daily from multiple interconnected systems makes it more challenging to absorb this information and make accurate informed decisions. Thus, the need for an automated well-structured approach for decision making is evident. Decision Support Systems (DSS) are interactive software-based systems that play a fundamental role as a technology enabler to provide analytical and visualization capabilities to support decision makers make accurate decisions. In this paper, we present an architecture framework for building a cloud-based distributed DSS to facilitate the decision making process for the planning and design of complex systems. The framework provides a group decision making platform to be utilized by different stakeholders. The framework offers a web portal that leverages a collection of new, open-source technologies and protocols as well as open standards. These are important for interoperable access across technologies, platforms, and mobile devices.