A Survey on Modeling of Human States in Communication Behavior

The Technical Committee on Communication BehaviorEngineering addresses the research question How do we construct a com-munication network system that includes users?. The growth in highlyfunctional networks and terminals has brought about greater diversity inusers\u27 lifestyles and freed people from the restrictions of time and place.Under this situation, the similarities of human behavior cause traffic aggre-gation and generate new problems in terms of the stabilization of networkservice quality. This paper summarizes previous studies relevant to com-munication behavior from a multidisciplinary perspective and discusses theresearch approach adopted by the Technical Committee on CommunicationBehavior Engineering

On the Empty Miles of Ride-Sourcing Services: Theory, Observation and Countermeasures

The proliferation of smartphones in recent years has catalyzed the rapid growth of ride-sourcing services such as Uber, Lyft, and Didi Chuxing. Such on-demand e-hailing services significantly reduce the meeting frictions between drivers and riders and provide the platform with unprecedented flexibility and challenges in system management. A big issue that arises with service expansion is the empty miles produced by ride-sourcing vehicles. To overcome the physical and temporal frictions that separate drivers from customers and effectively reposition themselves towards desired destinations, ride-sourcing vehicles generate a significant number of vacant trips. These empty miles traveled result in inefficient use of the available fleet and increase traffic demand, posing substantial impacts on system operations. To tackle the issues, my dissertation is dedicated to deepening our understanding of the formation and the externalities of empty miles, and then proposing countermeasures to bolster system performance. There are two essential and interdependent contributors to empty miles generated by ride-sourcing vehicles: cruising in search of customers and deadheading to pick them up, which are markedly dictated by forces from riders, drivers, the platform, and policies imposed by regulators. In this dissertation, we structure our study of this complex process along three primary axes, respectively centered on the strategies of a platform, the behaviors of drivers, and the concerns of government agencies. In each axis, theoretical models are established to help understand the underlying physics and identify the trade-offs and potential issues that drive behind the empty miles. Massive data from Didi Chuxing, a dominant ride-sourcing company in China, are leveraged to evidence the presence of matters discussed in reality. Countermeasures are then investigated to strengthen management upon the empty miles, balance the interests of different stakeholders, and improve the system performance. Although this dissertation scopes out ride-sourcing services, the models, analyses, and solutions can be readily adapted to address related issues in other types of shared-use mobility services.PHDCivil EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163209/1/xzt_1.pd

Re-feedback: freedom with accountability for causing congestion in a connectionless internetwork

This dissertation concerns adding resource accountability to a simplex internetwork such as the Internet, with only necessary but sufficient constraint on freedom. That is, both freedom for applications to evolve new innovative behaviours while still responding responsibly to congestion; and freedom for network providers to structure their pricing in any way, including flat pricing. The big idea on which the research is built is a novel feedback arrangement termed ‘re-feedback’. A general form is defined, as well as a specific proposal (re-ECN) to alter the Internet protocol so that self-contained datagrams carry a metric of expected downstream congestion. Congestion is chosen because of its central economic role as the marginal cost of network usage. The aim is to ensure Internet resource allocation can be controlled either by local policies or by market selection (or indeed local lack of any control). The current Internet architecture is designed to only reveal path congestion to end-points, not networks. The collective actions of self-interested consumers and providers should drive Internet resource allocations towards maximisation of total social welfare. But without visibility of a cost-metric, network operators are violating the architecture to improve their customer’s experience. The resulting fight against the architecture is destroying the Internet’s simplicity and ability to evolve. Although accountability with freedom is the goal, the focus is the congestion metric, and whether an incentive system is possible that assures its integrity as it is passed between parties around the system, despite proposed attacks motivated by self-interest and malice. This dissertation defines the protocol and canonical examples of accountability mechanisms. Designs are all derived from carefully motivated principles. The resulting system is evaluated by analysis and simulation against the constraints and principles originally set. The mechanisms are proven to be agnostic to specific transport behaviours, but they could not be made flow-ID-oblivious

Snowball effect and traffic equilibrium in a market entry game: A laboratory experiment

The Market Entry Game (Selten & Guth, 1982; Gary-Bobo, 1990) is a coordination game where average cost of entry increase linearly. Following the suggestion of Anderson et al. (2008) and empirical evidence in transport economics suggested by related literature about the Speed-Flow Relationship (Verhoef, 2005), we built a theoretical model of market entry game where congestion cost increases at an increasing rate when the flow of entrants grows (snowball MEG). The calibration of experimental parameters enables us to compare outcomes regarding Snowball MEG to a benchmark based on a usual linear MEG (calibration being the same as in Anderson et al., 2008). Then, we run an experiment where theoretical predictions for both models give comparable entry rate and add more or less the same properties. Moreover, we conduct variation about group size in order to assess size effect on coordination level. Basically, we find no significant difference between the aggregated entry rates in our snowball game compared to usual MEG. But size clearly matters, especially for issue regarding successful coordination for users in the snowball MEG

Elicitation of strategies in four variants of a round-robin tournament: the case of Goofspiel

Goofspiel is a simple two-person zero-sum game for which there exist no known equilibrium strategies. To gain insight into what constitute winning strategies, we conducted a round-robin tournament in which participants were asked to provide computerized programs for playing the game with or without carryover. Each of these two variants was to be played under two quite different objective functions, namely, maximization of the cumulative number of points won across all opponents (as in Axelrod's tournament), and maximization of the probability of winning any given round. Our results show that there are, indeed, inherent differences in the results with respect to the complexity of the game and its objective function, and that winning strategies exhibit a level of sophistication, depth, and balance that are not captured by present models of adaptive learning

A New Business Model with a Plan for Alternative Revenue Streams for Design Factory Global Network (DFGN)

Objective of the study The objective of this study was to develop a new business model with a plan for alternative revenue streams for Design Factory Global Network (DFGN). The term “alternative” in this context refers to revenue streams that will complement the current funding that comes from the Finnish government. At the time of writing this thesis, an important question which was under scrutiny was whether annual membership fees should be introduced to all members of the network. Methodology The grounded theory was used since there were no previous empirical studies on the research topic and there is a need to create a structured model based on the qualitative data. As such, the instruments of inquiry were interviews, observations and data from secondary sources. Findings The key finding of this research was that new members of the network were willing to pay annual membership fees with the expectation that they will get returns on their investments. Old members were not willing to pay annual membership fees but they were ready to provide financial support through other means. Data also revealed that there was a need for improvement in the governance guidelines of the network, especially as they relate to documentation and decision rights of all stakeholders. Summary and Recommendations As per the research objective, a new business model was successfully developed for Design Factory Global Network (DFGN). The model was based on Osterwalder’s (2004) Business Model Canvas. The following recommendations were also made: * Official documents should be signed as part of the registration process of new members and the rights and obligations of every member – new and old – should be made explicit. * Only new members should be charged annual membership fees for a minimum of three years. * An integrated web-based system should be developed to serve as one-stop-shop for Design Factory Global Network (DFGN). Regarding the plan for alternative funding sources, the following revenue streams were suggested: 1. Companies pay annual subscription fees to join the “integrated system” platform 2. Companies pay to participate in the global students’ projects 3. Companies pay to participate in short ideation challenges aimed at solving companies’ mission-centric problems 4. Governments’ funds for “special” projects 5. Members pay annual subscription fees to access ‘’advanced functionalities’’ on the integrated system 6. A fraction of the income generated by complementors from users of the proposed integrated system 7. Philanthropic support from companies or wealthy individuals who are passionate about innovations in education 8. Endowment funds for innovation in education 9. Fees from special exclusive events during International Design Factory Week (IDFW) 10. Revenue from the alumni association of Design Factory Global Network (DFGN) 11. Generate revenue from non-intrusive data Conclusion The continuing increase in the membership of Design Factory Global Network (DFGN) suggests that academic institutions are beginning to realise the importance of interdisciplinary education that is student-centric and focused on solving real-world challenges

The Economics of Net Neutrality: Implications of Priority Pricing in Access Networks

This work systematically analyzes Net Neutrality from an economic point of view. To this end a framework is developed which helps to structure the Net Neutrality debate. Furthermore, the introduction of prioritization is studied by analyzing potential effects of Quality of Service (QoS) on Content and Service Providers (CSPs) and Internet Users (IUs)