278,384 research outputs found
Game Theory for Secure Critical Interdependent Gas-Power-Water Infrastructure
A city's critical infrastructure such as gas, water, and power systems, are
largely interdependent since they share energy, computing, and communication
resources. This, in turn, makes it challenging to endow them with fool-proof
security solutions. In this paper, a unified model for interdependent
gas-power-water infrastructure is presented and the security of this model is
studied using a novel game-theoretic framework. In particular, a zero-sum
noncooperative game is formulated between a malicious attacker who seeks to
simultaneously alter the states of the gas-power-water critical infrastructure
to increase the power generation cost and a defender who allocates
communication resources over its attack detection filters in local areas to
monitor the infrastructure. At the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium of this
game, numerical results show that the expected power generation cost deviation
is 35\% lower than the one resulting from an equal allocation of resources over
the local filters. The results also show that, at equilibrium, the
interdependence of the power system on the natural gas and water systems can
motivate the attacker to target the states of the water and natural gas systems
to change the operational states of the power grid. Conversely, the defender
allocates a portion of its resources to the water and natural gas states of the
interdependent system to protect the grid from state deviations.Comment: 7 pages, in proceedings of Resilience Week 201
Scheduling strategies for LTE uplink with flow behaviour analysis
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a cellular technology developed to support\ud
diversity of data traffic at potentially high rates. It is foreseen to extend the capacity and improve the performance of current 3G cellular networks. A key\ud
mechanism in the LTE traffic handling is the packet scheduler, which is in charge of allocating resources to active flows in both the frequency and time dimension. In this paper we present a performance comparison of two distinct scheduling schemes for LTE uplink (fair fixed assignment and fair work-conserving) taking into account both packet level characteristics and flow level dynamics due to the random user behaviour. For that purpose, we apply a combined analytical/simulation approach which enables fast evaluation of performance measures such as mean flow transfer times manifesting the impact of resource allocation strategies. The results show that the resource allocation strategy has a crucial impact on performance and that some trends are observed only if flow level dynamics are considered
Human-Machine Collaborative Optimization via Apprenticeship Scheduling
Coordinating agents to complete a set of tasks with intercoupled temporal and
resource constraints is computationally challenging, yet human domain experts
can solve these difficult scheduling problems using paradigms learned through
years of apprenticeship. A process for manually codifying this domain knowledge
within a computational framework is necessary to scale beyond the
``single-expert, single-trainee" apprenticeship model. However, human domain
experts often have difficulty describing their decision-making processes,
causing the codification of this knowledge to become laborious. We propose a
new approach for capturing domain-expert heuristics through a pairwise ranking
formulation. Our approach is model-free and does not require enumerating or
iterating through a large state space. We empirically demonstrate that this
approach accurately learns multifaceted heuristics on a synthetic data set
incorporating job-shop scheduling and vehicle routing problems, as well as on
two real-world data sets consisting of demonstrations of experts solving a
weapon-to-target assignment problem and a hospital resource allocation problem.
We also demonstrate that policies learned from human scheduling demonstration
via apprenticeship learning can substantially improve the efficiency of a
branch-and-bound search for an optimal schedule. We employ this human-machine
collaborative optimization technique on a variant of the weapon-to-target
assignment problem. We demonstrate that this technique generates solutions
substantially superior to those produced by human domain experts at a rate up
to 9.5 times faster than an optimization approach and can be applied to
optimally solve problems twice as complex as those solved by a human
demonstrator.Comment: Portions of this paper were published in the Proceedings of the
International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in 2016 and
in the Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS) in 2016. The paper
consists of 50 pages with 11 figures and 4 table
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Centralized versus market-based approaches to mobile task allocation problem: State-of-the-art
Centralized approach has been adopted for finding solutions to resource allocation problems (RAPs) in many real-life applications. On the other hand, market-based approach has been proposed as an alternative to solve the problem due to recent advancement in ICT technologies. In spite of the existence of some efforts to review the pros and cons of each approach in RAPs, the studies cannot be directly applied to specific problem domains like mobile task allocation problem which is characterised with high level of uncertainty on the availability of resources (workers). This paper aims to review existing studies on task allocation problems(TAPs) focusing on those two approaches and their comparison and identify major issues that need to be resolved for comparing the two approaches in mobile task allocation problems. Mobile Task Allocation Problem (MTAP) is defined and its problematic structures are explained in relation with task allocation to mobile workers. Solutions produced by each approach to some applications and variations of MTAP are also discussed and compared. Finally, some future research directions are identified in order to compare both approaches in function of uncertainty emerging from the mobile nature of the MTAP
Allocating Resources and Creating Incentives to Improve Teaching and Learning
Offers insights from scholarly literature, related theory, and practical activities to inform the efforts of policymakers, researchers and practitioners to allocate resources and create incentives that result in powerful, equitable learning for all
Optimization of resource allocation can explain the temporal dynamics and honesty of sexual signals
In species in which males are free to dynamically alter their allocation to sexual signaling over the breeding season, the optimal investment in signaling should depend on both a maleâs state and the level of competition he faces at any given time. We developed a dynamic optimization model within a gameâtheoretical framework to explore the resulting signaling dynamics at both individual and population levels and tested two key model predictions with empirical data on threeâspined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) males subjected to dietary manipulation (carotenoid availability): (1) fish in better nutritional condition should be able to maintain their signal for longer over the breeding season, resulting in an increasingly positive correlation between nutritional status and signal (i.e., increasing signal honesty), and (2) female preference for more ornamented males should thus increase over the breeding season. Both predictions were supported by the experimental data. Our model shows how such patterns can emerge from the optimization of resource allocation to signaling in a competitive situation. The key determinants of the honesty and dynamics of sexual signaling are the condition dependency of male survival, the initial frequency distribution of nutritional condition in the male population, and the cost of signaling
Resource allocation
This report discusses the problem of the allocation of resources: how should an organisation (such as MOD) invest bearing in mind the long term delay for the realization of investment strategies, and how might this apply in times of increasing budgetary constraints? After making certain simplifying assumptions, the Study Group constructed a prototype model based on the method of Optimal Control. This allows the decision maker to investigate the impact of particular investment strategies over a period of years, the impact being measured in terms of âqualityâ or âcapabilityâ. Interventions can be designed so that âqualityâ (Q) is maximized at a particular time, or so that the average quality over a given time interval is maximized. Both of these approaches are explored. This model shows reasonable behaviour when tested over a parameter set. It could be used as part of a systems approach to the defence budget as a whole, but the method itself is scalable to smaller (or larger) resourcing conundrums
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