Analysis and Evaluation of Incentive Compatible Dynamic Mechanisms for Carrier Collaboration

This paper introduces a framework for carrier dynamic collaboration. In particular it proposes and analyzes dynamic collaborative mechanisms that are incentive compatible. The dynamic collaborative environment is characterized by a set of carriers that have a proprietary set of customers that generate a stream of random demands over time. The proposed collaborative mechanism is such that upon each demand arrival, each carrier has the incentive to submit the arrived shipment or service request to the collaborative mechanism. Intuition about the efficiency and workings of the collaborative mechanism is developed. A general framework to formulate and study collaborative frameworks among transportation carriers is proposed. A truckload pickup-and-delivery collaborative environment is simulated and results are analyzed

Analysis and Evaluation of Incentive Compatible Dynamic Mechanisms for Carrier Collaboration

This paper introduces a framework for carrier dynamic collaboration. In particular it proposes and analyzes dynamic collaborative mechanisms that are incentive compatible. The dynamic collaborative environment is characterized by a set of carriers that have a proprietary set of customers that generate a stream of random demands over time. The proposed collaborative mechanism is such that upon each demand arrival, each carrier has the incentive to submit the arrived shipment or service request to the collaborative mechanism. Intuition about the efficiency and workings of the collaborative mechanism is developed. A general framework to formulate and study collaborative frameworks among transportation carriers is proposed. A truckload pickup-and-delivery collaborative environment is simulated and results are analyzed

Semantic transportation planning for food products supply chain ecosystem within difficult geographic zones

Purpose – In difficult geographical zones (mountain, intra-cities areas, etc.), many shippers, from small and medium enterprises to individuals, may demand delivery of different food products ( fresh, refrigerated, frozen, etc.) in small quantities. On the other side, carrier companies wish to use their vehicles optimally. Taking into account the perishability constraints (short-shelflife, temperature limits, etc.) of the transported food products and environmentalconstraints (pollution, carbon impact) while consolidatingmultiple kinds of food products to use vehicles optimally is not achieved by current transportation planning solutions. The purpose of this paper is to present an interoperable solution of a marketplace, formed by shippers and carriers, dedicated to the schedule of food transport orders. Design/methodology/approach – This transportation planning system named Interoperable-Pathfinder, Order, Vehicle, Environment and Supervisor (I-POVES) is an interoperable multi-agent system, based on the SCEP (supervisor, customer, environment and producer) model (Archimede and Coudert, 2001). Ontologies are developed to create the planning marketplace comprising demands and offers from different sources (multiple shippers and carriers). Findings – A hierarchy ontology for food products. A transporter system ontology. A global ontology that contains all shared concepts used by local ontologies of both shippers and carriers. I-POVES an interoperable model, which facilitates collaboration between carriers and their shippers through its active agents. Practical implications – I-POVES is tested on a case study from the TECCAS Poctefa project, comprising transport and food companies from both sides of the Pyrenees (France and Spain). Originality/value – There has been much work in the literature on the delivery of products, but very few on the delivery of food products. Work related to delivery of food products focuses mostly on timely delivery for avoiding its wastage. In this paper, constraints related to food products and to environment (pollution and carbon impact) of transport resources are taken into account while planning the delivery

МЕТОДИКА ВИБОРУ ПОСЛІДОВНОСТІ ВИКОНАННЯ ЗАМОВЛЕНЬ НА МІЖМІСЬКІ ВАНТАЖНІ АВТОМОБІЛЬНІ ПЕРЕВЕЗЕННЯ

The article is devoted to the problem of selection and distribution of known orders for long-distance transportation of goods by small transport companies. The ordering of the incoming flow of orders for transportation of cargoes taking into account time restrictions on their performance is considered. The incoming order flows of such enterprises are stochastic and different in the structure of transport cycles. The random nature of orders leads to the fact that their execution requires additional unproductive costs of the carrier's resources. It is taken into account that orders for transportation are unequally correlated. The article assumes that the compatibility of two orders, which are performed in a common route by one vehicle, characterizes the additional time spent on mileage and downtime. The pairwise coefficient of order compatibility is the ratio of the "net" time for order fulfillment to the time required for preparatory additional operations and trips in connection with the previous execution of another order. The set of orders can also be characterized by the average group value of the compatibility factor. The theoretical research model is based on the principle that from any set of known and ready to execute orders, you can choose a subset for which the average group compatibility factor is maximum. This means that the selected subset can be performed with greater efficiency by a given fleet of vehicles without the involvement of funds for cooperation. Therefore, the task of operational planning of the park in terms of stochastic input flow can be simplified to linear integer programming. A new version of the problem has been formulated, which allows to find a guaranteed exact solution for a suitable operating time of calculation. The approbation of the theoretical model at search of optimum plans of transportation of cargoes at the small motor transport enterprise is executed. The influence of the average group compatibility coefficient on the total profit of the enterprise from transportations in the form of the regression equation is established. The theoretical model agrees well with the empirical data according to Fisher's criterion. An algorithm for using the initial analysis of the incoming flow of orders to increase the profitability of the transport company is proposed.The article is devoted to the problem of selection and distribution of known orders for long-distance transportation of goods by small transport companies. The ordering of the incoming flow of orders for transportation of cargoes taking into account time restrictions on their performance is considered. The incoming order flows of such enterprises are stochastic and different in the structure of transport cycles. The random nature of orders leads to the fact that their execution requires additional unproductive costs of the carrier's resources. It is taken into account that orders for transportation are unequally correlated. The article assumes that the compatibility of two orders, which are performed in a common route by one vehicle, characterizes the additional time spent on mileage and downtime. The pairwise coefficient of order compatibility is the ratio of the "net" time for order fulfillment to the time required for preparatory additional operations and trips in connection with the previous execution of another order. The set of orders can also be characterized by the average group value of the compatibility factor. The theoretical research model is based on the principle that from any set of known and ready to execute orders, you can choose a subset for which the average group compatibility factor is maximum. This means that the selected subset can be performed with greater efficiency by a given fleet of vehicles without the involvement of funds for cooperation. Therefore, the task of operational planning of the park in terms of stochastic input flow can be simplified to linear integer programming. A new version of the problem has been formulated, which allows to find a guaranteed exact solution for a suitable operating time of calculation. The approbation of the theoretical model at search of optimum plans of transportation of cargoes at the small motor transport enterprise is executed. The influence of the average group compatibility coefficient on the total profit of the enterprise from transportations in the form of the regression equation is established. The theoretical model agrees well with the empirical data according to Fisher's criterion. An algorithm for using the initial analysis of the incoming flow of orders to increase the profitability of the transport company is proposed

Iterative Combinatorial Auction for Carrier Collaboration in Logistic Services

In collaborative logistics, multiple carriers form a network to share their transportation capacities. Collaboration among carriers results in improved resource utilization and, therefore, reduced costs. In this thesis, we propose an auction-based model for carrier collaboration in transportation services. The model achieves carrier collaboration through facilitating the negotiation among carriers over a group of shipping orders required by one or a group of shippers. The negotiation is conducted through a combinatorial iterative auction mechanism with the objective of minimizing the carriers’ overall costs. We first present a centralized carrier collaboration problem model in which a central entity has all required information to compute an optimal solution. We then consider a more realistic game theoretic setting where auction-based mechanism is applied to deal with self-interests of carriers. Compared with one-shot auctions, the proposed iterative bidding framework has the properties of reducing carriers’ information revelation and accommodating dynamic changes during the bidding process. Experimental results show that the procurement cost performance and the quality of solutions computed using the proposed iterative auction model is close to that of the optimal solutions

Integration of Blockchain and Auction Models: A Survey, Some Applications, and Challenges

In recent years, blockchain has gained widespread attention as an emerging technology for decentralization, transparency, and immutability in advancing online activities over public networks. As an essential market process, auctions have been well studied and applied in many business fields due to their efficiency and contributions to fair trade. Complementary features between blockchain and auction models trigger a great potential for research and innovation. On the one hand, the decentralized nature of blockchain can provide a trustworthy, secure, and cost-effective mechanism to manage the auction process; on the other hand, auction models can be utilized to design incentive and consensus protocols in blockchain architectures. These opportunities have attracted enormous research and innovation activities in both academia and industry; however, there is a lack of an in-depth review of existing solutions and achievements. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey of these two research topics. We review the existing solutions for integrating blockchain and auction models, with some application-oriented taxonomies generated. Additionally, we highlight some open research challenges and future directions towards integrated blockchain-auction models

A Mechanism Design Approach to Bandwidth Allocation in Tactical Data Networks

The defense sector is undergoing a phase of rapid technological advancement, in the pursuit of its goal of information superiority. This goal depends on a large network of complex interconnected systems - sensors, weapons, soldiers - linked through a maze of heterogeneous networks. The sheer scale and size of these networks prompt behaviors that go beyond conglomerations of systems or `system-of-systems\u27. The lack of a central locus and disjointed, competing interests among large clusters of systems makes this characteristic of an Ultra Large Scale (ULS) system. These traits of ULS systems challenge and undermine the fundamental assumptions of today\u27s software and system engineering approaches. In the absence of a centralized controller it is likely that system users may behave opportunistically to meet their local mission requirements, rather than the objectives of the system as a whole. In these settings, methods and tools based on economics and game theory (like Mechanism Design) are likely to play an important role in achieving globally optimal behavior, when the participants behave selfishly. Against this background, this thesis explores the potential of using computational mechanisms to govern the behavior of ultra-large-scale systems and achieve an optimal allocation of constrained computational resources Our research focusses on improving the quality and accuracy of the common operating picture through the efficient allocation of bandwidth in tactical data networks among self-interested actors, who may resort to strategic behavior dictated by self-interest. This research problem presents the kind of challenges we anticipate when we have to deal with ULS systems and, by addressing this problem, we hope to develop a methodology which will be applicable for ULS system of the future. We build upon the previous works which investigate the application of auction-based mechanism design to dynamic, performance-critical and resource-constrained systems of interest to the defense community. In this thesis, we consider a scenario where a number of military platforms have been tasked with the goal of detecting and tracking targets. The sensors onboard a military platform have a partial and inaccurate view of the operating picture and need to make use of data transmitted from neighboring sensors in order to improve the accuracy of their own measurements. The communication takes place over tactical data networks with scarce bandwidth. The problem is compounded by the possibility that the local goals of military platforms might not be aligned with the global system goal. Such a scenario might occur in multi-flag, multi-platform military exercises, where the military commanders of each platform are more concerned with the well-being of their own platform over others. Therefore there is a need to design a mechanism that efficiently allocates the flow of data within the network to ensure that the resulting global performance maximizes the information gain of the entire system, despite the self-interested actions of the individual actors. We propose a two-stage mechanism based on modified strictly-proper scoring rules, with unknown costs, whereby multiple sensor platforms can provide estimates of limited precisions and the center does not have to rely on knowledge of the actual outcome when calculating payments. In particular, our work emphasizes the importance of applying robust optimization techniques to deal with the uncertainty in the operating environment. We apply our robust optimization - based scoring rules algorithm to an agent-based model framework of the combat tactical data network, and analyze the results obtained. Through the work we hope to demonstrate how mechanism design, perched at the intersection of game theory and microeconomics, is aptly suited to address one set of challenges of the ULS system paradigm - challenges not amenable to traditional system engineering approaches

Blockchain-enabled resource management and sharing for 6G communications

The sixth-generation (6G) network must provide performance superior to previous generations to meet the requirements of emerging services and applications, such as multi-gigabit transmission rate, even higher reliability, and sub 1 ms latency and ubiquitous connection for the Internet of Everything (IoE). However, with the scarcity of spectrum resources, efficient resource management and sharing are crucial to achieving all these ambitious requirements. One possible technology to achieve all this is the blockchain. Because of its inherent properties, the blockchain has recently gained an important position, which is of great significance to 6G network and other networks. In particular, the integration of the blockchain in 6G will enable the network to monitor and manage resource utilization and sharing efficiently. Hence, in this paper, we discuss the potentials of the blockchain for resource management and sharing in 6G using multiple application scenarios, namely, Internet of things, device-to-device communications, network slicing, and inter-domain blockchain ecosystems