Attitudes and Coalitions in Brownfield Redevelopment and Environmental Management

Conflict analysis tools are applied to brownfield negotiations in order to investigate the impacts of coalition formation and a decision maker’s (DM’s) attitudes upon the successful resolution of brownfield disputes. The concepts of attitudes within the Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR) is defined and subsequently are used, along with coalition analysis methods, to examine the redevelopment of the Kaufman Lofts property and the resolution of a post-development dispute involving Eaton’s Lofts, both located in downtown Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Within the model of the Kaufman Lofts redevelopment, the project is broken down into three connected project conflicts: property acquisition, remediation selection and redevelopment; with the graph model applied to all three conflict nodes. The application of attitudes shows the impact of cooperation between local governments and private developers in the formation of a coalition that mutually benefits all parties. Coalition analysis, applied to the redevelopment selection conflict between Heritage Kitchener and the private developer in the Kaufman Lofts project, illustrates the importance of close collaboration between the local government and the developer. Systems methodologies implemented here for the examination of brownfield redevelopments are examined and contrasted with the economic and environmental tools commonly used in the redevelopment industry. Furthermore, coalition formation within GMCR is used to examine the negotiation of the Kyoto Protocol, to demonstrate that formal conflict resolution methods can be utilized in other areas of environmental management

Deception in Game Theory: A Survey and Multiobjective Model

Game theory is the study of mathematical models of conflict. It provides tools for analyzing dynamic interactions between multiple agents and (in some cases) across multiple interactions. This thesis contains two scholarly articles. The first article is a survey of game-theoretic models of deception. The survey describes the ways researchers use game theory to measure the practicality of deception, model the mechanisms for performing deception, analyze the outcomes of deception, and respond to, or mitigate the effects of deception. The survey highlights several gaps in the literature. One important gap concerns the benefit-cost-risk trade-off made during deception planning. To address this research gap, the second article introduces a novel approach for modeling these trade-offs. The approach uses a game theoretic model of deception to define a new multiobjective optimization problem called the deception design problem (DDP). Solutions to the DDP provide courses of deceptive action that are efficient in terms of their benefit, cost, and risk to the deceiver. A case study based on the output of an air-to-air combat simulator demonstrates the DDP in a 7 x 7 normal form game. This approach is the first to evaluate benefit, cost, and risk in a single game theoretic model of deception

Évaluation de la confiance dans la collaboration à large échelle

Large-scale collaborative systems wherein a large number of users collaborate to perform a shared task attract a lot of attention from both academic and industry. Trust is an important factor for the success of a large-scale collaboration. It is difficult for end-users to manually assess the trust level of each partner in this collaboration. We study the trust assessment problem and aim to design a computational trust model for collaborative systems. We focused on three research questions. 1. What is the effect of deploying a trust model and showing trust scores of partners to users? We designed and organized a user-experiment based on trust game, a well-known money-exchange lab-control protocol, wherein we introduced user trust scores. Our comprehensive analysis on user behavior proved that: (i) showing trust score to users encourages collaboration between them significantly at a similar level with showing nick- name, and (ii) users follow the trust score in decision-making. The results suggest that a trust model can be deployed in collaborative systems to assist users. 2. How to calculate trust score between users that experienced a collaboration? We designed a trust model for repeated trust game that computes user trust scores based on their past behavior. We validated our trust model against: (i) simulated data, (ii) human opinion, and (iii) real-world experimental data. We extended our trust model to Wikipedia based on user contributions to the quality of the edited Wikipedia articles. We proposed three machine learning approaches to assess the quality of Wikipedia articles: the first one based on random forest with manually-designed features while the other two ones based on deep learning methods. 3. How to predict trust relation between users that did not interact in the past? Given a network in which the links represent the trust/distrust relations between users, we aim to predict future relations. We proposed an algorithm that takes into account the established time information of the links in the network to predict future user trust/distrust relationships. Our algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art approaches on real-world signed directed social network datasetsLes systèmes collaboratifs à large échelle, où un grand nombre d’utilisateurs collaborent pour réaliser une tâche partagée, attirent beaucoup l’attention des milieux industriels et académiques. Bien que la confiance soit un facteur primordial pour le succès d’une telle collaboration, il est difficile pour les utilisateurs finaux d’évaluer manuellement le niveau de confiance envers chaque partenaire. Dans cette thèse, nous étudions le problème de l’évaluation de la confiance et cherchons à concevoir un modèle de confiance informatique dédiés aux systèmes collaboratifs. Nos travaux s’organisent autour des trois questions de recherche suivantes. 1. Quel est l’effet du déploiement d’un modèle de confiance et de la représentation aux utilisateurs des scores obtenus pour chaque partenaire ? Nous avons conçu et organisé une expérience utilisateur basée sur le jeu de confiance qui est un protocole d’échange d’argent en environnement contrôlé dans lequel nous avons introduit des notes de confiance pour les utilisateurs. L’analyse détaillée du comportement des utilisateurs montre que: (i) la présentation d’un score de confiance aux utilisateurs encourage la collaboration entre eux de manière significative, et ce, à un niveau similaire à celui de l’affichage du surnom des participants, et (ii) les utilisateurs se conforment au score de confiance dans leur prise de décision concernant l’échange monétaire. Les résultats suggèrent donc qu’un modèle de confiance peut être déployé dans les systèmes collaboratifs afin d’assister les utilisateurs. 2. Comment calculer le score de confiance entre des utilisateurs qui ont déjà collaboré ? Nous avons conçu un modèle de confiance pour les jeux de confiance répétés qui calcule les scores de confiance des utilisateurs en fonction de leur comportement passé. Nous avons validé notre modèle de confiance en relativement à: (i) des données simulées, (ii) de l’opinion humaine et (iii) des données expérimentales réelles. Nous avons appliqué notre modèle de confiance à Wikipédia en utilisant la qualité des articles de Wikipédia comme mesure de contribution. Nous avons proposé trois algorithmes d’apprentissage automatique pour évaluer la qualité des articles de Wikipédia: l’un est basé sur une forêt d’arbres décisionnels tandis que les deux autres sont basés sur des méthodes d’apprentissage profond. 3. Comment prédire la relation de confiance entre des utilisateurs qui n’ont pas encore interagi ? Etant donné un réseau dans lequel les liens représentent les relations de confiance/défiance entre utilisateurs, nous cherchons à prévoir les relations futures. Nous avons proposé un algorithme qui prend en compte les informations temporelles relatives à l’établissement des liens dans le réseau pour prédire la relation future de confiance/défiance des utilisateurs. L’algorithme proposé surpasse les approches de la littérature pour des jeux de données réels provenant de réseaux sociaux dirigés et signé

Relative Gains Problem and Case Studies of Economic Cooperation in East Asia

Relative gains problem basically means unequal cooperative payoffs disproportionately favoring partners. With the relative gains problem widely accepted as a serious impediment to international cooperation, some scholars have theoretically argued or modeled several conditions that are most likely to foster a state\u27s sensitivity to relative gains and thus substantially affect the prospects for cooperation. But little empirical work has been done to date. The central objective of this dissertation is to test whether those theoretical propositions can be supported by empirical evidence. For this purpose, we have deducted three hypotheses: (1) If a state faces military threat and zero-sum political competition from another state, then it will be extremely sensitive to relative gains, thereby restricting economic interactions favoring the rival state; (2) If a state believes that its partner is a rising power in a changed system, then it will show increasing sensitivity to relative gains and seek for its bargaining power; and (3) If a cooperative arrangement is likely to put a state in a competitive disadvantage and hurt its long-term growth, then it will be acutely sensitive to such relative losses and will not cooperate. The hypothesized causal relationships are tested via three cases: Taiwan\u27s restriction of its economic interactions with China since 1979, Japan\u27s reduction of its ODA commitment to China in the fourth loan package, and China\u27s rejection of the flying geese model since the mid-1980s. The hypotheses in both Taiwan and ODA cases are strongly supported by the evidence, while the evidence for actual policy outcomes (i.e., non-cooperation) in the flying geese model is mixed. Therefore, the relative gains approach has a formal deductive logic and parsimonious power in analyzing cooperation barriers in East Asia. The study has also three policy implications. First, largely because of defensive cooperation, relative gains concerns do not always jeopardize or eliminate cooperation. Second, even high relative gains concerns may not be fully reflected in policy outcomes, since the extent to which they are ultimately translated into policy is constrained by many other factors. And third, due to strong relative gains concerns, no formal economic bloc in East Asia could be created in the near future, and the continuation of US military presence in the region is highly necessary

Stochastic models for biological evolution

In this work, we deal with the problem of creating a model that describes a population of agents undergoing Darwinian Evolution, which takes into account the basic phenomena of this process. According to the principles of evolutionary biology, Evolution occurs if there is selection and adaptation of phenotypes, mutation of genotypes, presence of physical space. The evolution of a biological population is then described by a system of ordinary stochastic differential equations; the basic model of dynamics represents the trend of a population divided into different types, with relative frequency in a simplex. The law governing this dynamics is called Replicator Dynamics: the growth rate of type k is measured in terms of evolutionary advantage, with its own fitness compared to the average in the population. The replicator dynamics model turns into a stochastic process when we consider random mutations that can transform fractions of individuals into others. The two main forces of Evolution, selection and mutation, act on different layers: the environment acts on the phenotype, selecting the fittest, while the randomness of the mutations affects the genotype. This difference is underlined in the model, where each genotype express a phenotype, and fitness influences emerging traits, not explicitly encoded in genotypes. The presence of a potentially infinite space of available genomes makes sure that variants of individuals with characteristics never seen before can be generated. In conclusion, numerical simulations are provided for some applications of the model, such as a variation of Conway's Game of Lif

Crime and its Control in the People's Republic of China

The Centre for Criminology at the University of Hong Kong was established in 1999 to provide a home for indigenous studies of crime and criminal justice in Hong Kong and the region. As part of this objective it sought to provide a platform for both academics and practitioners to share their knowledge and to assist in the development of effective strategies to deal with the increasingly sophisticated problem of crime. The annual symposium on 'Crime and its Control in Greater China' functions as a forum to discuss interdisciplinary research on crime relevant to Greater China. The various components of Greater China have common cultural, linguistic and economic bonds that give rise to some similar crime problems and opportunities to resolve them. Therefore it seemed appropriate that both scholars and practitioners from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan should meet to discuss their research on these issues. In the furtherance of these objectives it has been gratifying that the Chinese Peoples' Public Security University has participated in these events and co-hosted the 3rd Symposium. They also organised a Symposium in Beijing in 2002 to discuss ‘Criminal Trends and Countermeasures’and invited the Centre for Criminology to co-host, that event. This is the type of synergy that our annual event aspires to generate. A conscious intention of the annual symposium is to be broad in terms of both the range of topics covered and the depth of experience of the speakers. For this reason the symposium has provided a platform for postgraduate students to introduce their research as well as for well-established scholars with an international reputation for excellence in their chosen area of research. To further the concept of providing a bridge between academia and practice, several speakers are usually invited from the private sector to present their views on the problems and issues that concern them. These proceedings provide a record of selected papers presented at the various symposia and demonstrate the wide variety of topics covered and interests of speakers. I hope this bilingual event will help to fill the need that exists for a joint effort to review and discuss developments in criminology relevant to Greater China

Consumption Risk-sharing in Social Networks

We develop a model of informal risk-sharing in social networks, where relationships between individuals can be used as social collateral to enforce insurance payments. We characterize incentive compatible risk-sharing arrangements and obtain two results. (1) The degree of informal insurance is governed by the expansiveness of the network, measured by the number of connections that groups of agents have with the rest of the community, relative to group size. Two-dimensional networks, where people have connections in multiple directions, are sufficiently expansive to allow very good risk-sharing. We show that social networks in Peruvian villages satisfy this dimensionality property; thus, our model can explain Townsend's (1994) puzzling observation that village communities often exhibit close to full insurance. (2) In second-best arrangements, agents organize in endogenous "risk-sharing islands" in the network, where shocks are shared fully within, but imperfectly across islands. As a result, network based risk-sharing is local: socially closer agents insure each other more.

Resource Allocation and Service Management in Next Generation 5G Wireless Networks

The accelerated evolution towards next generation networks is expected to dramatically increase mobile data traffic, posing challenging requirements for future radio cellular communications. User connections are multiplying, whilst data hungry content is dominating wireless services putting significant pressure on network's available spectrum. Ensuring energy-efficient and low latency transmissions, while maintaining advanced Quality of Service (QoS) and high standards of user experience are of profound importance in order to address diversifying user prerequisites and ensure superior and sustainable network performance. At the same time, the rise of 5G networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) evolution is transforming wireless infrastructure towards enhanced heterogeneity, multi-tier architectures and standards, as well as new disruptive telecommunication technologies. The above developments require a rethinking of how wireless networks are designed and operate, in conjunction with the need to understand more holistically how users interact with the network and with each other. In this dissertation, we tackle the problem of efficient resource allocation and service management in various network topologies under a user-centric approach. In the direction of ad-hoc and self-organizing networks where the decision making process lies at the user level, we develop a novel and generic enough framework capable of solving a wide array of problems with regards to resource distribution in an adaptable and multi-disciplinary manner. Aiming at maximizing user satisfaction and also achieve high performance - low power resource utilization, the theory of network utility maximization is adopted, with the examined problems being formulated as non-cooperative games. The considered games are solved via the principles of Game Theory and Optimization, while iterative and low complexity algorithms establish their convergence to steady operational outcomes, i.e., Nash Equilibrium points. This thesis consists a meaningful contribution to the current state of the art research in the field of wireless network optimization, by allowing users to control multiple degrees of freedom with regards to their transmission, considering mobile customers and their strategies as the key elements for the amelioration of network's performance, while also adopting novel technologies in the resource management problems. First, multi-variable resource allocation problems are studied for multi-tier architectures with the use of femtocells, addressing the topic of efficient power and/or rate control, while also the topic is examined in Visible Light Communication (VLC) networks under various access technologies. Next, the problem of customized resource pricing is considered as a separate and bounded resource to be optimized under distinct scenarios, which expresses users' willingness to pay instead of being commonly implemented by a central administrator in the form of penalties. The investigation is further expanded by examining the case of service provider selection in competitive telecommunication markets which aim to increase their market share by applying different pricing policies, while the users model the selection process by behaving as learning automata under a Machine Learning framework. Additionally, the problem of resource allocation is examined for heterogeneous services where users are enabled to dynamically pick the modules needed for their transmission based on their preferences, via the concept of Service Bundling. Moreover, in this thesis we examine the correlation of users' energy requirements with their transmission needs, by allowing the adaptive energy harvesting to reflect the consumed power in the subsequent information transmission in Wireless Powered Communication Networks (WPCNs). Furthermore, in this thesis a fresh perspective with respect to resource allocation is provided assuming real life conditions, by modeling user behavior under Prospect Theory. Subjectivity in decisions of users is introduced in situations of high uncertainty in a more pragmatic manner compared to the literature, where they behave as blind utility maximizers. In addition, network spectrum is considered as a fragile resource which might collapse if over-exploited under the principles of the Tragedy of the Commons, allowing hence users to sense risk and redefine their strategies accordingly. The above framework is applied in different cases where users have to select between a safe and a common pool of resources (CPR) i.e., licensed and unlicensed bands, different access technologies, etc., while also the impact of pricing in protecting resource fragility is studied. Additionally, the above resource allocation problems are expanded in Public Safety Networks (PSNs) assisted by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), while also aspects related to network security against malign user behaviors are examined. Finally, all the above problems are thoroughly evaluated and tested via a series of arithmetic simulations with regards to the main characteristics of their operation, as well as against other approaches from the literature. In each case, important performance gains are identified with respect to the overall energy savings and increased spectrum utilization, while also the advantages of the proposed framework are mirrored in the improvement of the satisfaction and the superior Quality of Service of each user within the network. Lastly, the flexibility and scalability of this work allow for interesting applications in other domains related to resource allocation in wireless networks and beyond

The New Silk Roads' Impact on the Persian Gulf Region. Contextualizing China's Economic Ties and Diplomatic Relations with the Gulf States.

China’s rise and Middle Eastern insecurity are two dominating themes in international relations today. Yet, their relevance for each other is less discussed. The most important connection is China’s and the Persian Gulf region’s new economic interdependence – a part of Asia’s so-called New Silk Roads. Energy and non-energy trade between the Gulf and China has grown fast and is increasingly accompanied by investment flows in both directions, as well as closer diplomatic relations. The same has happened with regards to the ties between the Gulf and other Asian countries, like India. Nevertheless, it is still the US that underwrites basic regional stability with its military presence. So far, Asian countries, China included, have thus benefited by fee-riding on it. However, as China’s power increases and US appetite for Middle Eastern engagement decreases, it needs to be asked whether China (or anyone else) will one day inherit the American mantle and geo-politically dominate the Gulf. This PhD thesis seeks to answer that question via the help of three types of contextualization: Firstly, the use of the two most influential, but antagonistic IR theories – neo-liberal institutionalism and neo-realism – tests which is the more accurate for China’s Gulf role. It ultimately argues in favour of a neo-neo synthesis around the concept of regional hegemonic stablity. Secondly, a brief recap of historical analogies regarding previous external powers and their rivalries in the Gulf is provided. These range from early-modern actors, over the British Raj and to the American hegemon. Thirdly, the inter-regional context is provided by briefly outlining the Gulf states' relations with China's Asian competitors, Japan, South Korea, and India. In the second part of the thesis, China's New Silk Roads across Eurasia and the Gulf are analysed via a regional overview and then via two case studies, on China-Saudi Arabia relations and China-United Arab Emirates relations. The conclusion brings all these various threads together in order to undertake a comparison between current American, Chinese (and partly Indian) capabilities, and their future opportunities and risks. This is done via theoretical assessments as well as historical contextualization and discussion of useful analogies. Why is this research question important? On the one hand, the world economy’s hydrocarbon-dependence continues to rely on the Gulf’s huge reserves. On the other, the region offers a long history of geo-strategic centrality to world affairs and will likely also help determine into which direction global power flows in the 21st century