Follow @EC_JRC_IHCPnews
European Commission > JRC > IHCP > Our Laboratories > Computational Toxicology and Modelling > QSAR Tools > DART (Decision Analysis by Ranking Techniques)
Personal tools
 

DART (Decision Analysis by Ranking Techniques)

DART (Decision Analysis by Ranking Techniques) is a powerful and user-friendly software tool designed for the ranking of chemicals according to their environmental and toxicological concern based on the most recent ranking theories. Different kinds of order ranking methods, roughly classified as total (also called even-scoring) and partial-order ranking methods (Hasse diagram technique), are implemented in DART. These methods can be used to rank chemicals on the basis of more than one variable.

DART was developed by Talete srl (Milan, Italy) under the terms of a JRC contract. The software is made freely available as a service to scientific researchers and anyone with an interest in the application of computer-based ranking methods.		   dart1.jpg  

 

DART (Version 2.05) - Download area


This software can be downloaded (free of charge) from this website:
The source code file is available on request. Please contact the Computational Toxicology Group.

 

Contact persons


Please send any comments, enquiries or bug reports to Talete with copy to the Computational Toxicology Group.

 

Key features


    • Easy to install.
    • Different kinds of total ranking techniques are implemented: desirability, utility, dominance functions and others.
    • The partial ranking technique called the Hasse diagram is also implemented.
    • A total of 19 different kinds of functions allow the user to explicitly define the best condition for each variable used in the decision process.
    • A weighting scheme is also implemented to take into account the importance of variables in the decision rule.
    • Principal Component Analysis is implemented, with graphical options to evaluate laodings and scores and to save a user-defined number of principal components as new variables.
    • A clustering method allows the selection of a user-defined number of samples for each cluster.
    • Separate significant digit depletion for each variable and broad order statistics are also implemented.
    • Results are provided in a professional graphical user interface. Pareto plots, histograms, line plots and 2D / 3D scatter plots are implemented.
    • An electronic manual is provided.

 

Case studies on the applicability of DART


A compilation of case studies investigating and illustrating the applicability of DART is available here:

 

Copyright and Disclaimer Notice


DART Version 2.0 is open source software developed under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 (June 1991) of the License, or any later version. For more details, see the GNU General Public License at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt.

We request that proper credit is given to the copyright and authorship for DART. This includes adding the following copyright notice to the beginning of your source code files, and to any copyright notice that you may distribute with programs based on this work:

Developed by Talete Srl (contact info@talete.mi.it) on behalf of the Joint Research Centre (JRC). Copyright European Union (2008).
The DART tool is being made available by the JRC as a service to the worldwide scientific and regulatory communities. The JRC provides no technical support, warranties or remedies for this software. It does not imply any endorsement or acceptance by the JRC or by the European Commission of the algorithms encoded in the software. The European Commission shall not be liable to the User or any third party for any direct or indirect, special, incidental, punitive, cover or consequential damages, arising out of the use of, or inability to use, DART.

 

References


  1. Hendriks MMWB, Boer JH, Smilde AK & Doorbos DA (1992). Multicriteria Decision Making. Chemometric and Intelligent Laboratory Systems16, 175-191
  2. Keller HR & Massart DL (1991). Multicriteria Decision Making: a case study. Chemometric and Intelligent Laboratory Systems 11, 175-189.
  3. Lewi PJ, Van Hoof J, & Boey P (1992). Multicriteria Decision Making Using Pareto Optimality and PROMETHEE Preference Ranking. Chemometric and Intelligent Laboratory Systems 16, 139-144.
  4. Bruggemann R, Bucherl C, Pudenz S & Steinberg CEW (1993). Application of the Concept of Partial Order on Comparative Evaluation of Environmental Chemicals. Acta Hydrochimica et Hydrobiologica 27, 170-178.
  5. Bruggemann R & Bartel H-G (1999). A Theoretical Concept to Rank Environmentally Significant Chemicals. Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences 39, 211-217.
  6. Halfon E & Reggiani MG (1986). On Ranking Chemicals for Environmental Hazard. Environmental Science and Technology 20, 1173-1179.

 

Document Actions