The triangle assessment method: a new procedure for eliciting expert judgement

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is one of the most widely used Multi-Criteria Decision-Making methods worldwide. As such, it is subject to criticisms that highlight some potential weaknesses. In this study, we present a new Multi-Criteria Decision-Making method denominated the “Triangular Assessment Method” (referred to by its Spanish abbreviation, MTC©). The MTC© aims to make use of the potential of AHP while avoiding some of its drawbacks. The main characteristics and advantages of the MTC© can be summarised as follows: (i) evaluation of criteria, and of the alternative options for each criterion, in trios instead of pairs; (ii) elimination of discrete scales and values involved in judgements; (iii) a substantial reduction in the number of evaluations (trios) relative to the corresponding number of pairs which would have to be considered when applying the AHP method; (iv) consistent decision-making; (v) introduction of closed cyclical series for comparing criteria and alternatives; and (vi) the introduction of opinion vectors and opinion surfaces. This new method is recommended for supporting decision-making with large numbers of subjective criteria and/or alternatives and also for group decisions where the consensus must be evaluated. The MTC© provides a different promising perspective in decision-making and could lead to new research lines in the field of information systems.This work was supported by the Galician Regional Government [“Programa de Consolidación e Estructuración de Unidades de Investigación Competitivas, modalidade de Grupos de Referencia Competitiva” for the period 2006–2017] and by the European Union [ERDF program]. Likewise, the authors thank Daniele de Rigo, Dora Henriques and Cesar Pérez-Cruzado, because his comments improved notably this manuscript.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Applications of Axiomatic Design in academic publications 2013-2018 : A Systematic Literature Review

Aksiomaattinen suunnitteluteoria on ollut kasvavan kiinnostuksen kohteena tiedeyhteisössä siitä lähtien, kun Nam P. Suh esitteli teorian 1990-luvulla. Siitä huolimatta, että aiheesta on tehty runsaasti aktiivista tutkimusta (muun muassa vuotuinen aksiomaattiseen suunnitteluteoriaan keskittynyt konferenssi), kattavia kirjallisuuskatsauksia on kirjoitettu vähän. Tämä tutkimus pyrkii osaltaan täyttämään edelläkuvattua aukkoa aksiomaattisen suunnitteluteorian tutkimuskentällä, keskittyen julkaisuihin vuodesta 2013 vuoteen 2018. Tutkimus on kirjoitettu jatkumoksi vuonna 2010 tutkijoiden Kulak, Cebi & Kahmaran (2010) julkaisemalle kirjallisuuskatsakuselle. Tämän vuoksi samankaltainen kategorisointi on implementoitu tähän tutkimukseen. Kategorisoinnin perusteina ovat käytetty aksiooma, sovellutusalue, metodologia ja määrittelytyyppi. Sovellutusalueisiin on tässä tutkimuksessa lisätty ’palvelut’ omana, uutena kategorianaan. Työssä esitellään lyhyesti aksiomaattinen suunnitteluteoria ja sen keskeiset osa- alueet, tärkeimpinä sunnnittelualueet, suunnitteluprosessi ja suunnitteluaksioomat. Metodologia-osiossa taustoitetaan systemaattisen kirjallisuuskatsauksen soveltamista tähän tutkimukseen ja kuvataan prosessin toteutus PRISMA-mallia käyttäen. Tutkimustulokset käydään lyhyesti läpi esimerkein kustakin kategoriasta. Tutkimusaineisto esitetään sekä lukuina, liitteenä että graaffeina. Näitä kirjallisuuskatsauksen tutkimustuloksia verrataan varhemman tutkimuksen vastaaviin. Sovelletun aksiooman suhteen merkittäviä muutoksia ei ole havaittavissa tämän tutkimuksen perusteella aikaisempaan kirjallisuuskatsaukseen verrattuna. Sovellutusaluessa, sitä vastoin, systeemisuunnittelun osuus on kasvanut merkittävästi edelliseen tutkimukseen verrattuna, kun taas ohjelmistosuunnittelun osuus on vastaavasti pienentynyt. Palvelusuunnittelun osuus on verrattain vaatimaton, joskin suurempi kuin esimerkiksi ohjelmistosuunnittelun. Tämän tutkimuksen perusteella suositellaan jatkotutkimuksia erityisesti aksiomaattisen suunitteluteorian sovellutuksista ohjelmisto- ja palvelusuunnitteluihin sekä mahdollisista syistä, miksi mainittujen sovellutusaljen osuus tutkimuskentässä on pienehkö.Axiomatic Design theory has been gaining growing interest within a design community since introduced by Nam P. Suh in 1990s. Despite an active research within the field, including yearly international conferences of Axiomatic Design, there is not many literature reviews made of academic publications of Axiomatic Design. This research aims to fulfil previously described gap on secondary research of Axiomatic Design, focusing on papers published between 2013 and 2018. The study is a continuum to previous paper published by Kulak, Cebi & Kahmaran (2010). Therefore, similar categorization based on applied axiom, application area, methodology and evaluation type is applied in this research. In application area, ‘services’ have been added as a new category for this research. Results are compared with previous study. In findings, no siginificant change has happened in applied axiom, Independece axiom still being clearly more popular within academic publications. In application area, however, there are noticeable changes compared to the previous study. Share of system design has increased while softare design has significantly decreased. Future research is recommended to further explore specifically applications of Axiomatic Design in software and in services

A hierarchical integration method under social constraints to maximize satisfaction in multiple criteria group decision making systems

Aggregating multiple opinions or assessments in a decision has always been a challenging field topic for researchers. Over the last decade, different approaches, mainly based on weighting data sources or decision-makers (DMs), have been proposed to resolve this issue, although social choice theory, focused on frameworks to combine individual opinions, is generally overlooked. To resolve this situation, a novel methodology is developed in this paper based on social choice theory and statistical mathematics. This method innovates by dividing the assessment into components which provides a multiple assessment analysis, assigning weights to each source regarding their position compared to the group for each considered criteria. This multiple-weighting process maximises individual and group satisfaction. Furthermore, the method makes it possible to manage previously assigned influence. An example is given to illustrate the proposed methodology. Additionally, sensitivity analysis is performed and comparisons with other methods are made. Finally, conclusions are presented.The first author acknowledges support from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports [grant number FPU18/01471]. The second and third author wish to recognise their support from the Serra Hunter programme. Finally, this work was supported by the Catalan agency AGAUR through its research group support program (2017SGR00227). This research is part of the R&D project IAQ4EDU, reference no. PID2020-117366RB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A risk assessment approach to improve the resilience of a seaport system using Bayesian networks

Over the years, many efforts have been focused on developing methods to design seaport systems, yet disruption still occur because of various human, technical and random natural events. Much of the available data to design these systems are highly uncertain and difficult to obtain due to the number of events with vague and imprecise parameters that need to be modelled. A systematic approach that handles both quantitative and qualitative data, as well as means of updating existing information when new knowledge becomes available is required. Resilience, which is the ability of complex systems to recover quickly after severe disruptions, has been recognised as an important characteristic of maritime operations. This paper presents a modelling approach that employs Bayesian belief networks to model various influencing variables in a seaport system. The use of Bayesian belief networks allows the influencing variables to be represented in a hierarchical structure for collaborative design and modelling of the system. Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is utilised to evaluate the relative influence of each influencing variable. It is envisaged that the proposed methodology could provide safety analysts with a flexible tool to implement strategies that would contribute to the resilience of maritime systems

Learning-Assisted Automated Reasoning with Flyspeck

The considerable mathematical knowledge encoded by the Flyspeck project is combined with external automated theorem provers (ATPs) and machine-learning premise selection methods trained on the proofs, producing an AI system capable of answering a wide range of mathematical queries automatically. The performance of this architecture is evaluated in a bootstrapping scenario emulating the development of Flyspeck from axioms to the last theorem, each time using only the previous theorems and proofs. It is shown that 39% of the 14185 theorems could be proved in a push-button mode (without any high-level advice and user interaction) in 30 seconds of real time on a fourteen-CPU workstation. The necessary work involves: (i) an implementation of sound translations of the HOL Light logic to ATP formalisms: untyped first-order, polymorphic typed first-order, and typed higher-order, (ii) export of the dependency information from HOL Light and ATP proofs for the machine learners, and (iii) choice of suitable representations and methods for learning from previous proofs, and their integration as advisors with HOL Light. This work is described and discussed here, and an initial analysis of the body of proofs that were found fully automatically is provided

"The Way in which an Experiment is Conducted is Unbelievably Important": On the Experimentation Practices of Economists and Psychologists

To discuss experimental results without discussing how they came about makes sense when the results are robust to the way experiments are conducted. Experimental results, however, are – arguably more often than not – sensitive to numerous design and implementation characteristics such as the use of financial incentives, deception, and the way information is presented. To the extent that economists and psychologists have different experimental practices, this claim is of obvious practical and interpretative relevance. In light of the empirical results summarized below, it seems warranted to say that it does not make sense to report experimental results without reporting the design and implementation choices that were made.Duhem-Quine problem, experimental design, experimental implementation, financial incentives, deception

Collaborative Models for Supply Networks Coordination and Healthcare Consolidation

This work discusses the collaboration framework among different members of two complex systems: supply networks and consolidated healthcare systems. Although existing literature advocates the notion of strategic partnership/cooperation in both supply networks and healthcare systems, there is a dearth of studies quantitatively analyzing the scope of cooperation among the members and its benefit on the global performance. Hence, the first part of this dissertation discusses about two-echelon supply networks and studies the coordination of buyers and suppliers for multi-period procurement process. Viewing the issue from the same angel, the second part studies the coordination framework of hospitals for consolidated healthcare service delivery. Realizing the dynamic nature of information flow and the conflicting objectives of members in supply networks, a two-tier coordination mechanism among buyers and suppliers is modeled. The process begins with the intelligent matching of buyers and suppliers based on the similarity of users profiles. Then, a coordination mechanism for long-term agreements among buyers and suppliers is proposed. The proposed mechanism introduces the importance of strategic buyers for suppliers in modeling and decision making process. To enhance the network utilization, we examine a further collaboration among suppliers where cooperation incurs both cost and benefit. Coalitional game theory is utilized to model suppliers\u27 coalition formation. The efficiency of the proposed approaches is evaluated through simulation studies. We then revisit the common issue, the co-existence of partnership and conflict objectives of members, for consolidated healthcare systems and study the coordination of hospitals such that there is a central referral system to facilitate patients transfer. We consider three main players including physicians, hospitals managers, and the referral system. As a consequence, the interaction within these players will shape the coordinating scheme to improve the overall system performance. To come up with the incentive scheme for physicians and aligning hospitals activities, we define a multi-objective mathematical model and obtain optimal transfer pattern. Using optimal solutions as a baseline, a cooperative game between physicians and the central referral system is defined to coordinate decisions toward system optimality. The efficiency of the proposed approach is examined via a case study

Agent Based Gameplaying System

Tato práce se zabývá universálními agentními systémy pro hraní her. Oproti běžným agentům, kteří jsou určeni pouze pro určitý druh činnosti nebo konkrétní hru, universální agent musí být schopen hrát prakticky libovolnou hru popsanou ve formálním deklarativním jazyce. Výzvou je především to, že pravidla hry nejsou předem známa, což znemožňuje použití některých optimalizací nebo vytvoření dobré heuristické funkce. Práce je rozdělena na teoretickou a praktickou část. První část představuje oblast univerzálních herních agentů, definuje jazyk GDL pro popis pravidel her a zabývá se vytvářením heuristických funkcí a jejich aplikací v algoritmu Monte Carlo stromové hledání. V praktické části je představen obecný způsob, jak vytvořit novou heuristickou funkci, která je poté integrována do vlastního herního agenta a ten je pak porovnán s dalšími existujícími systémy.This thesis deals with general game playing agent systems. On the contrary with common agents, which are designed only for a specified task or a game, general game playing agents have to be able to play basically any arbitrary game described in a formal declarative language. The biggest challenge is that the game rules are not known beforehand, which makes it impossible to use some optimizations or to make a good heuristic function. The thesis consists of a theoretical and a practical part. The first part introduces the field of general game playing agents, defines the Game Description Language and covers construction of heuristic evaluation functions and their integration within the Monte Carlo tree search algorithm. In the practical part, a general method of creating a new heuristic function is presented, which is later integrated into a proper agent, which is compared then with other systems.

Visual balance in engineering design for aesthetic value

The aesthetic aspect of a functional product is growing to be an important reason for the consumer’s choice to buy the product. Despite this importance, aesthetics has not generally been incorporated into engineering design which makes much sense of functional and ergonomic designs. The study presented in this thesis aims to remedy this observed gap. The study focuses on the integration of aesthetic attributes with functional attributes of a product and on the quantification of the aesthetic principle from fine arts into design variables of the product. In particular, two hypotheses underlie this study: (1) design variables can be classified in terms of their relevance to functional, ergonomic, and aesthetic attributes, and (2) a particular aesthetic principle, namely visual balance, helps to achieve an improved aesthetic product.The cell phone is used to ground this study. A statistic experiment using the cell phone product positively tests the first hypothesis, resulting in two design variable which are only related to the aesthetic attribute of the cell phone product. The study of the visual balance principle results in a more general formula which relates design variables to visual balance with consideration of both geometry and color of the cell phone product. Finally, another statistic experiment is designed, which positively tests the second hypothesis.This study concludes: (1) the effective integration of aesthetics with function and ergonomics requires an analysis and classification of design variables, and (2) there is a potential to quantify all aesthetic principles from fine arts into design variables