Matroids are Immune to Braess Paradox

The famous Braess paradox describes the following phenomenon: It might happen that the improvement of resources, like building a new street within a congested network, may in fact lead to larger costs for the players in an equilibrium. In this paper we consider general nonatomic congestion games and give a characterization of the maximal combinatorial property of strategy spaces for which Braess paradox does not occur. In a nutshell, bases of matroids are exactly this maximal structure. We prove our characterization by two novel sensitivity results for convex separable optimization problems over polymatroid base polyhedra which may be of independent interest.Comment: 21 page

Integration of Forecasting, Scheduling, Machine Learning, and Efficiency Improvement Methods into the Sport Management Industry

Sport management is a complicated and economically impactful industry and involves many crucial decisions: such as which players to retain or release, how many concession vendors to add, how many fans to expect, what teams to schedule, and many others are made each offseason and changed frequently. The task of making such decisions effectively is difficult, but the process can be made easier using methods of industrial and systems engineering (ISE). Integrating methods such as forecasting, scheduling, machine learning, and efficiency improvement from ISE can be revolutionary in helping sports organizations and franchises be consistently successful. Research shows areas including player evaluation, analytics, fan attendance, stadium design, accurate scheduling, play prediction, player development, prevention of cheating, and others can be improved when ISE methods are used to target inefficient or wasteful areas

Generation of crowd arrival and destination locations/times in complex transit facilities

In order to simulate virtual agents in the replica of a real facility across a long time span, a crowd simulation engine needs a list of agent arrival and destination locations and times that reflect those seen in the actual facility. Working together with a major metropolitan transportation authority, we propose a specification that can be used to procedurally generate this information. This specification is both uniquely compact and expressive—compact enough to mirror the mental model of building managers and expressive enough to handle the wide variety of crowds seen in real urban environments. We also propose a procedural algorithm for generating tens of thousands of high-level agent paths from this specification. This algorithm allows our specification to be used with traditional crowd simulation obstacle avoidance algorithms while still maintaining the realism required for the complex, real-world simulations of a transit facility. Our evaluation with industry professionals shows that our approach is intuitive and provides controls at the right level of detail to be used in large facilities (200,000+ people/day)

Slots in the City: A Critical Look at the Balance of Decision-Making Power in Gaming Legislation

This Note focuses on the ability of local governmental bodies and local actors to become involved when a state seeks to introduce casino-based gaming or license additional casino properties. Traditionally, states retain the power to make most gaming-related decisions, sometimes only allowing simple yes or no voter referenda. This note argues that an increased role for local actors in bringing gaming to cities will best protect the interests of the people most affected by casinos. Part I provides a brief background of gambling in America and the key aspects of gaming-enabling legislation in various states. Part II discusses local government law and theory. Part III examines aspects of casino gambling that highlight the importance of local involvement in the legislative and regulatory process. It also discusses case studies of commercial casino development in Philadelphia and Detroit. Part IV compares the introduction of gaming in the two cities to better understand the successful introduction of casinos in Detroit. The Note concludes that the capability for local actors to help guide the healthy development of gambling necessarily requires that state enabling legislation reserves a role for local governments and voters in the process of introducing and licensing gaming operations in their municipality

Slots in the City: A Critical Look at the Balance of Decision-Making Power in Gaming Legislation

This Note focuses on the ability of local governmental bodies and local actors to become involved when a state seeks to introduce casino-based gaming or license additional casino properties. Traditionally, states retain the power to make most gaming-related decisions, sometimes only allowing simple yes or no voter referenda. This note argues that an increased role for local actors in bringing gaming to cities will best protect the interests of the people most affected by casinos. Part I provides a brief background of gambling in America and the key aspects of gaming-enabling legislation in various states. Part II discusses local government law and theory. Part III examines aspects of casino gambling that highlight the importance of local involvement in the legislative and regulatory process. It also discusses case studies of commercial casino development in Philadelphia and Detroit. Part IV compares the introduction of gaming in the two cities to better understand the successful introduction of casinos in Detroit. The Note concludes that the capability for local actors to help guide the healthy development of gambling necessarily requires that state enabling legislation reserves a role for local governments and voters in the process of introducing and licensing gaming operations in their municipality

Publicly Accessible Toilets: An Inclusive Design Guide

This guide has been developed from an inclusive design philosophy. It aims to incorporate the needs, aspirations and desires of people of all ages, abilities and ethnicities, who will become the future users of its design outcomes. ‘Publicly accessible toilets’ refers to all toilets that the public can access without having to buy anything. This includes those in shopping centres, parks and transport hubs, as well as the public toilets and community toilet schemes provided by the local authority

Bookmobile Operations and the Library System

published or submitted for publicatio

A multi-agent system with application in project scheduling

The new economic and social dynamics increase project complexity and makes scheduling problems more difficult, therefore scheduling requires more versatile solutions as Multi Agent Systems (MAS). In this paper the authors analyze the implementation of a Multi-Agent System (MAS) considering two scheduling problems: TCPSP (Time-Constrained Project Scheduling), and RCPSP (Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling). The authors propose an improved BDI (Beliefs, Desires, and Intentions) model and present the first the MAS implementation results in JADE platform.multi-agent architecture, scheduling, project management, BDI architecture, JADE.

A Tradition of Sovereignty: Examining Tribal Sovereign Immunity in Bay Mills Indian Community v. Michigan

This commentary previews an upcoming Supreme Court case, Bay Mills Indian Community v. Michigan, in which the Court may decide whether the doctrine of Tribal Sovereign Immunity prohibits Michigan\u27s attempt to enjoin Indian gaming in the state or whether Congress expressly allowed the suit when passing the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act

The Strategy-Proof Provision of Public Goods under Congestion and Crowding Preferences

We examine the strategy-proof provision of excludable public goods when agents care not only about the level of provision of a public good, but also the number of consumers. We show that on such domains strategy- proof and efficient social choice functions satisfying an outsider independence condition must be rigid in that they must always assign a fixed number of consumers, regardless of individual desires to participate. The fixed number depends on the attitudes of agents regarding group size - being small when congestion effects dominate (individuals prefer to have fewer other consumers) and large when cost sharing effects dominate (agents prefer to have more consumers). A hierarchical rule selects which consumers participate and a variation of a generalized median rule to selects the level of the public good. Under heterogeneity in agents' views on the optimal number of consumers, strategy-proof, efficient, and outsider independent social choice functions are much more limited and in an important case must be dictatorial.Public Goods, Congestion, Club Goods, Strategy-Proof