Simulating The Impact of Emissions Control on Economic Productivity Using Particle Systems and Puff Dispersion Model

A simulation platform is developed for quantifying the change in productivity of an economy under passive and active emission control mechanisms. The program uses object-oriented programming to code a collection of objects resembling typical stakeholders in an economy. These objects include firms, markets, transportation hubs, and boids which are distributed over a 2D surface. Firms are connected using a modified Prim’s Minimum spanning tree algorithm, followed by implementation of an all-pair shortest path Floyd Warshall algorithm for navigation purposes. Firms use a non-linear production function for transformation of land, labor, and capital inputs to finished product. A GA-Vehicle Routing Problem with multiple pickups and drop-offs is implemented for efficient delivery of commodities across multiple nodes in the economy. Boids are autonomous agents which perform several functions in the economy including labor, consumption, renting, saving, and investing. Each boid is programmed with several microeconomic functions including intertemporal choice models, Hicksian and Marshallian demand function, and labor-leisure model. The simulation uses a Puff Dispersion model to simulate the advection and diffusion of emissions from point and mobile sources in the economy. A dose-response function is implemented to quantify depreciation of a Boid’s health upon contact with these emissions. The impact of emissions control on productivity and air quality is examined through a series of passive and active emission control scenarios. Passive control examines the impact of various shutdown times on economic productivity and rate of emissions exposure experienced by boids. The active control strategy examines the effects of acceptable levels of emissions exposure on economic productivity. The key findings on 7 different scenarios of passive and active emissions controls indicate that rate of productivity and consumption in an economy declines with increased scrutiny of emissions from point sources. In terms of exposure rates, the point sources may not be the primary source of average exposure rates, however they significantly impact the maximum exposure rate experienced by a boid. Tightening of emissions control also negatively impacts the transportation sector by reducing the asset utilization rate as well as reducing the total volume of goods transported across the economy

Risk Assessment and Collaborative Information Awareness for Plan Execution

Joint organizational planning and plan execution in risk-prone environment, has seen renewed research interest given its potential for agility and cost reduction. The participants are often asked to quickly plan and execute tasks in partially known or hostile environments. This requires advanced decision support systems for situational response whereby state-of-the-art technologies can be used to handle issues such as plan risk assessment, appropriate information exchange, asset localization and adaptive planning with risk mitigation. Toward this end, this thesis contributes innovative approaches to address these issues, focusing on logistic support over risk-prone transport network as many organizational plans have key logistic components. Plan risk assessment involves property evaluation for vehicle risk exposure, cost bounds and contingency options assessment. Appropriate information exchange involves participant specific shared information awareness under unreliable communication. Asset localization mandates efficient sensor network management. Adaptive planning with risk mitigation entails limited risk exposure replanning, factoring potential vehicle and cargo loss. In this pursuit, this thesis first investigates risk assessment for asset movement and contingency valuation using probabilistic model-checking and decision trees, followed by elaborating a gossip based protocol for hierarchy-aware shared information awareness, also assessed via probabilistic model-checking. Then, the thesis proposes an evolutionary learning heuristic for efficiently managing sensor networks constrained in terms of sensor range, capacity and energy use. Finally, the thesis presents a learning based heuristic for cost effective adaptive logistic planning with risk mitigation. Instructive case studies are also provided for each contribution along with benchmark results evaluating the performance of the proposed heuristic techniques

Operational Research: Methods and Applications

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order. The authors dedicate this paper to the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake victims. We sincerely hope that advances in OR will play a role towards minimising the pain and suffering caused by this and future catastrophes

Operational Research: Methods and Applications

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order

Mathematical Methods and Operation Research in Logistics, Project Planning, and Scheduling

In the last decade, the Industrial Revolution 4.0 brought flexible supply chains and flexible design projects to the forefront. Nevertheless, the recent pandemic, the accompanying economic problems, and the resulting supply problems have further increased the role of logistics and supply chains. Therefore, planning and scheduling procedures that can respond flexibly to changed circumstances have become more valuable both in logistics and projects. There are already several competing criteria of project and logistic process planning and scheduling that need to be reconciled. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that even more emphasis needs to be placed on taking potential risks into account. Flexibility and resilience are emphasized in all decision-making processes, including the scheduling of logistic processes, activities, and projects