Modeling and control of complex dynamic systems: Applied mathematical aspects

The concept of complex dynamic systems arises in many varieties, including the areas of energy generation, storage and distribution, ecosystems, gene regulation and health delivery, safety and security systems, telecommunications, transportation networks, and the rapidly emerging research topics seeking to understand and analyse. Such systems are often concurrent and distributed, because they have to react to various kinds of events, signals, and conditions. They may be characterized by a system with uncertainties, time delays, stochastic perturbations, hybrid dynamics, distributed dynamics, chaotic dynamics, and a large number of algebraic loops. This special issue provides a platform for researchers to report their recent results on various mathematical methods and techniques for modelling and control of complex dynamic systems and identifying critical issues and challenges for future investigation in this field. This special issue amazingly attracted one-hundred-and eighteen submissions, and twenty-eight of them are selected through a rigorous review procedure

Soft computing and its use in risk management

New analytical methods have begun to be used in risk management. The methods such as fuzzy logic, neural network and genetic algorithms rank among them. The article shortly describes these methods and represents their possible applications in the risk management. These methods can contribute to decreasing of the risk and thus the human and material losses

The Project Scheduling Problem with Non-Deterministic Activities Duration: A Literature Review

Purpose: The goal of this article is to provide an extensive literature review of the models and solution procedures proposed by many researchers interested on the Project Scheduling Problem with nondeterministic activities duration. Design/methodology/approach: This paper presents an exhaustive literature review, identifying the existing models where the activities duration were taken as uncertain or random parameters. In order to get published articles since 1996, was employed the Scopus database. The articles were selected on the basis of reviews of abstracts, methodologies, and conclusions. The results were classified according to following characteristics: year of publication, mathematical representation of the activities duration, solution techniques applied, and type of problem solved. Findings: Genetic Algorithms (GA) was pointed out as the main solution technique employed by researchers, and the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) as the most studied type of problem. On the other hand, the application of new solution techniques, and the possibility of incorporating traditional methods into new PSP variants was presented as research trends. Originality/value: This literature review contents not only a descriptive analysis of the published articles but also a statistical information section in order to examine the state of the research activity carried out in relation to the Project Scheduling Problem with non-deterministic activities duration.Peer Reviewe

Fast, accurate, and transferable many-body interatomic potentials by symbolic regression

The length and time scales of atomistic simulations are limited by the computational cost of the methods used to predict material properties. In recent years there has been great progress in the use of machine learning algorithms to develop fast and accurate interatomic potential models, but it remains a challenge to develop models that generalize well and are fast enough to be used at extreme time and length scales. To address this challenge, we have developed a machine learning algorithm based on symbolic regression in the form of genetic programming that is capable of discovering accurate, computationally efficient manybody potential models. The key to our approach is to explore a hypothesis space of models based on fundamental physical principles and select models within this hypothesis space based on their accuracy, speed, and simplicity. The focus on simplicity reduces the risk of overfitting the training data and increases the chances of discovering a model that generalizes well. Our algorithm was validated by rediscovering an exact Lennard-Jones potential and a Sutton Chen embedded atom method potential from training data generated using these models. By using training data generated from density functional theory calculations, we found potential models for elemental copper that are simple, as fast as embedded atom models, and capable of accurately predicting properties outside of their training set. Our approach requires relatively small sets of training data, making it possible to generate training data using highly accurate methods at a reasonable computational cost. We present our approach, the forms of the discovered models, and assessments of their transferability, accuracy and speed