Due to the worldwide situation about the COVID-19 that is causing travel restrictions, limitation on public gatherings, the 49th Western Decision Sciences Institute Annual conference, scheduled for April 7th – 10th, 2020 in Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront, (Portland, OR), was cancelled. This difficult decision was made after careful assessment of the risks as determined by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO), and in consultation with DSI and the WDSI Board of Directors. We were closely monitoring the global and domestic situation regarding the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), since February 2020. Due to the inability to accurately assess the potential reach of the virus from the potential consequences of bringing together a large group of people from around the world, we decided on March 6th, 2020 to cancel our 2020 WDSI Annual Conference. We are fully committed to protect the health and safety of our members and our communities.
Since the screening of the paper and presentation submissions and all refereeing processes are completed, WDSI 49th Conference, Portland 2020 Proceedings is being published online, even though the face-to-face presentations had not taken place. Proceedings comprise of all accepted submissions that their authors opted to have their papers or abstracts to be included in the Proceedings. Please note that all copyrights still remain with the authors.