Analyzing User Plans to Produce Informative Responses by a Programmer's Consultant

One problem in current help systems for programming utility packages is their inability to provide information within the context of the task at hand. The relationship of a user's goal to the user's plan to accomplish that goal is not taken into account. Furthermore, even a goal/plan based help system should be informative by following rules of discourse. This paper puts established rules of discourse into the context of a programming environment, and describes how a report based on an analysis of a user's intended goal and stated plan can be generated. The programming environment under discussion is a programmer's tool kit for graphically exploring complex hierarchical data structures. A program that we have developed called the Plan Analyst is described that finds the relationship between a users intended goal and stated plan by mapping the goal to the functions of the tool kit. The report generated is informative because discourse rules have been in coded in the knowledge representation that is searched by the Plan Analyst. The intent of this paper is to demonstrate the potential for applying methods of discourse behavior from Natural Language Processing research to 3D interactive programming environment

Updating, Upgrading, Refining, Calibration and Implementation of Trade-Off Analysis Methodology Developed for INDOT

As part of the ongoing evolution towards integrated highway asset management, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), through SPR studies in 2004 and 2010, sponsored research that developed an overall framework for asset management. This was intended to foster decision support for alternative investments across the program areas on the basis of a broad range of performance measures and against the background of the various alternative actions or spending amounts that could be applied to the several different asset types in the different program areas. The 2010 study also developed theoretical constructs for scaling and amalgamating the different performance measures, and for analyzing the different kinds of trade-offs. The research products from the present study include this technical report which shows how theoretical underpinnings of the methodology developed for INDOT in 2010 have been updated, upgraded, and refined. The report also includes a case study that shows how the trade-off analysis framework has been calibrated using available data. Supplemental to the report is Trade-IN Version 1.0, a set of flexible and easy-to-use spreadsheets that implement the tradeoff framework. With this framework and using data at the current time or in the future, INDOT’s asset managers are placed in a better position to quantify and comprehend the relationships between budget levels and system-wide performance, the relationships between different pairs of conflicting or non-conflicting performance measures under a given budget limit, and the consequences, in terms of system-wide performance, of funding shifts across the management systems or program areas

A Sustainable Supply Chain Model of Relationship Between Wood Supplier and Furniture Industry in Indonesia

Wooden furniture industry is an important industry sector in Indonesia, because many people\u27s welfare relyon this industry sector and the industry has a big social and environmental impacts. Many wooden furnitureindustries in Indonesia, especially in Central Java Province face problems related to the sustainability. The relationbetween wood suppliers and furniture industry is studied in this paper. A sustainable supply chain management (s-SCM) model is proposed as an approach for solutions for the problems. The approach is chosen due to the characteristics of the problems that related to economic, social, and environmental problems. This aim of this paper is to determine how much supply teak wood must be provided by PP to satisfy furniture industry demand, how much production capacity that must be increased and how large forest area that must be planted in order to achieve environmental and social goals without sacrificing economical goals much. Goal programming (GP) is chosen for solving the problems, because the goals are to maximize the total benefit,minimize the total loss and anticipate the conflicts between goals. Numerical trial based on observation in teak wooden furniture industry in Central Java was used to illustrate our findings. Using pareto efficient principle, the model can satisfy all goals that need to be achieved. Numerical results can be used by decision makers in teak wood industry to analyze the trade-off among several set of alternative solutions

Utility-derived Supply Function of Sheep Milk: The Case of Etoloakarnania, Greece

Sheep farming is an important agricultural activity in Greece, since it contributes significantly to the country’s gross agricultural production value. Recently, sheep milk production received further attention because of the increased demand for feta cheese and also because of the excessive price level suffered by consumers, in contrast with the prices paid at the farm level. In this study, we suggest the use of multicriteria analysis to estimate the supply response of sheep milk to price. The study focuses in the Prefecture of Etoloakarnania, located in Western Greece, where sheep farming is a common and traditional activity. A non-interactive technique is used to elicit farmers’ individual utility functions which are then optimized parametrically subject to technico-economic constraints, to estimate the supply function of sheep milk. Detailed data from selected farms, representing different farm types and management strategies, have been used in the analysis. The results indicate that the multicriteria model reflects the actual operation of the farms more accurately than the gross margin maximization model and therefore leads to a more robust estimation of the milk supply.Sheep-farming, multi-criteria, utility function, milk supply

A COMPARISON OF OBJECTIVE FUNCTION STRUCTURES USED IN A RECURSIVE GOAL PROGRAMMING-SIMULATIONS MODEL OF FARM GROWTH

Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Organic farming and multicriteria decisions: An economic survey

Organic food production is a sphere where decision making is multi-facetted and complex. This applies to producers, political decision makers and consumers alike. This paper provides an overview of the economic methods that can aid such multi criteria decision making. We first provide an outline of the many different Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) techniques available and their relative advantages and disadvantages. In addition, theoretical and practical problems related to the use of Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) and MCA respectively are briefly discussed. We then review the MCA literature on case studies on organic farming. Based on this review we provide directional markers for future research where MCA may possibly be applied and adapted in order to provide useful knowledge and support for decision makers in the context of organic farming