Construction Software Review .com

Overview

Founded in 1985, Palisade Corp. provides decision and risk analysis software to more than 150,000 users in more than 100 countries. After the success of its first product, Palisade developed several other risk analysis and decision support software solutions -- PrecisionTree, TopRank, StatTools, NeuralTools and Evolver -- which along with @RISK are bundled in the DecisionTools Suite. The latest version of all the products is v5.0.

@RISK

Palisade's @RISK software uses Microsoft Excel to provide its users with risk analysis. @RISK enables its users to better judge which risks to take and which to avoid by showing all possible outcomes in a Microsoft Excel worksheet and informing the users how likely each outcome is to occur, said the vendor.

Additional features of @RISK analysis software include the @RISK Function Swap, which allows use to remove and restore @RISK functions for sharing models with non-@RISK users; the @RISK Library, which allows users to define and share custom distributions and simulation results, and fully customizable graphs.

@RISK also includes the RISKOptimizer, which replaces all uncertain values of an optimization problem with @RISK functions that represent ranges of possible values. Then, RISKOptimizer tries several different combinations of adjustable cells until it achieves the goal that users have defined, all the while running Monte Carlo simulations on each trial solution to account for uncertainty. (Monte Carlo simulations are computerized mathematical techniques that allow people to account for risk in quantitative analysis and decision making.)