Excerpt from Gmis: An Experimental System for Data Management and Analysis How many pe0p1e would climb aboard a trans-atlantic flight if they thought the airline lacked the capability to process volumes of weather and traffic data, and to plan a safe route? Not many, for most of us have come to expect that the very best information processing services will be applied in this circumstance. Yet public policymakers and corporate executives are regularly faced with far more complex and serious problems (perhaps with risks that are less immediate and obvious), and must make decisions without the capacity to manage and analyze the pertinent infor mation. This happens for several reasons: Circumstances arise unexpectedly, and under current technology there simply is not time to construct the necessary software, or decisions may not occur regularly enough to justify the cost of a normal information management system, particularly when its useful life may be cut short by changing circumstances. In this paper we report on an effort to design and implement tools appropriate to this cir cumstance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.