Rapid Modeling for Sustainability - Foreword

It is our pleasure to introduce this special issue of Decision Support Systems on ‘Rapid Modeling for Sustainability’. It brings together core papers on Rapid Modeling, focusing on the rising dimensions of sustainability, which is raised on top of technical and financial modeling. Rapid Modeling refers to the basic models behind the structured process of decision making to manage and improve time based performance. As it was originally applied for manufacturing systems and supply chains, it has spread through decision making areas like private and public services, office operations and new product development. All these areas cope with a substantial effort of short and/or on-time delivery. Rapid refers to strong calculation possibilities so that various what-if scenarios can be run in a short period of time. In this way Rapid Modeling is very well suited to support both individual as group decision making processes. Therefore, we are honored to edit this special issue for Decision Support Systems.