Transportation network companies and drivers dilemma in China: an evolutionary game theoretic perspective

The ridesourcing services market in China has recently experienced significant changes, which stem from its legalization and management policy. These changes impact multiple stakeholders of this market (e.g., drivers, passengers, government, competing services) and present them with new opportunities and challenges. This paper develops an evolutionary game model to analyse the Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) between the Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) and drivers. The new model is explored and analysed with simulation experiments to observe the dynamic route of multiple stakeholders. The theoretical research and simulation results indicate that under the authorities’ control over the TNCs, when the net income under strict management is higher than that of the loose management for the TNCs, the final ESS is “Legal Operation, Strict Management”. When the net income under strict management is less than that of the loose management for the THCs, the strategy of “Illegal Operation, Loose Management” may gain popularity and continue to grow; in this case, the ESS may also not exist. The model indicates the strength of the government’s control plays a significant role in leading the achievement of “Legal Operation, Strict Management”. As a consequence, to achieve the perfect evolution of “Legal Operation, Strict Management”, it is necessary for the government to impose a greater penalty on illegal drivers and ensure appropriate compensation measures. The results of the study provide a useful reference for the sustainable development of the ridesourcing services market. First published online 13 September 201

A Socio-inspired CALM Approach to Channel Assignment Performance Prediction and WMN Capacity Estimation

A significant amount of research literature is dedicated to interference mitigation in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), with a special emphasis on designing channel allocation (CA) schemes which alleviate the impact of interference on WMN performance. But having countless CA schemes at one's disposal makes the task of choosing a suitable CA for a given WMN extremely tedious and time consuming. In this work, we propose a new interference estimation and CA performance prediction algorithm called CALM, which is inspired by social theory. We borrow the sociological idea of a "sui generis" social reality, and apply it to WMNs with significant success. To achieve this, we devise a novel Sociological Idea Borrowing Mechanism that facilitates easy operationalization of sociological concepts in other domains. Further, we formulate a heuristic Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model called NETCAP which makes use of link quality estimates generated by CALM to offer a reliable framework for network capacity prediction. We demonstrate the efficacy of CALM by evaluating its theoretical estimates against experimental data obtained through exhaustive simulations on ns-3 802.11g environment, for a comprehensive CA test-set of forty CA schemes. We compare CALM with three existing interference estimation metrics, and demonstrate that it is consistently more reliable. CALM boasts of accuracy of over 90% in performance testing, and in stress testing too it achieves an accuracy of 88%, while the accuracy of other metrics drops to under 75%. It reduces errors in CA performance prediction by as much as 75% when compared to other metrics. Finally, we validate the expected network capacity estimates generated by NETCAP, and show that they are quite accurate, deviating by as low as 6.4% on an average when compared to experimentally recorded results in performance testing

Supply chain business modelling

The developed work is motivated by the hypothesis that the presented Supply Chain Business Model is a practical and comprehensive approach to support not only operational day-to-day business decisions, but most importantly strategic and long term decisions that may define the success and the longevity of a business. Conceptually, the Business Supply Chain Model developed in this thesis replicates the behaviour and decision making of the different agents in a supply chain, and an Optimisation Module determines the optimised parameters that maximise the overall business profit, whatever scenario it may be. In the optimisation module, a Genetic Algorithm was used to determine the best equation parameters for each individual agent that optimise the overall supply chain profit. Furthermore, several business case-scenarios are presented and the findings highlighted. These case-scenarios prove that: the HC model is robust when subjected to predictable or unpredictable causes of variability; the bullwhip effect can be reduced significantly by applying GA as the optimisation tool; the improvement of profits needs to be evaluated at a global scale, independently of the individual agents’ profit; impact of supply shortages in the SC ; retail expansion analysis; delivery patterns change impact in profitability; impact of sourcing decisions in the SC profitability; model suitability for seasonal vs. non-seasonal products. The SC Modelling framework generic and globalising approach means that is easily applied and transposed to any other business realities and it can be easily changed to reflect other SC scenarios. The costing model associated means that, at any point in the network, all costs and profits can be easily measured. For the first time the shelf-life of a product captured and losses of product due to BBE dates, quantified. In this model the optimisation methodology runs parallel to the developed simulation tool, so the optimisation should be only run for new scenarios

Approaching algorithmic power

Contemporary power manifests in the algorithmic. Emerging quite recently as an object of study within media and communications, cultural research, gender and race studies, and urban geography, the algorithm often seems ungraspable. Framed as code, it becomes proprietary property, black-boxed and inaccessible. Framed as a totality, its becomes overwhelmingly complex, incomprehensible in its operations. Framed as a procedure, it becomes a technique to be optimised, bracketing out the political. In struggling to adequately grasp the algorithmic as an object of study, to unravel its mechanisms and materialities, these framings offer limited insight into how algorithmic power is initiated and maintained. This thesis instead argues for an alternative approach: firstly, that the algorithmic is coordinated by a coherent internal logic, a knowledge-structure that understands the world in particular ways; second, that the algorithmic is enacted through control, a material and therefore observable performance which purposively influences people and things towards a predetermined outcome; and third, that this complex totality of architectures and operations can be productively analysed as strategic sociotechnical clusters of machines. This method of inquiry is developed with and tested against four contemporary examples: Uber, Airbnb, Amazon Alexa, and Palantir Gotham. Highly profitable, widely adopted and globally operational, they exemplify the algorithmic shift from whiteboard to world. But if the world is productive, it is also precarious, consisting of frictional spaces and antagonistic subjects. Force cannot be assumed as unilinear, but is incessantly negotiated—operations of parsing data and processing tasks forming broader operations that strive to establish subjectivities and shape relations. These negotiations can fail, destabilised by inadequate logics and weak control. A more generic understanding of logic and control enables a historiography of the algorithmic. The ability to index information, to structure the flow of labor, to exert force over subjects and spaces— these did not emerge with the microchip and the mainframe, but are part of a longer lineage of calculation. Two moments from this lineage are examined: house-numbering in the Habsburg Empire and punch-card machines in the Third Reich. Rather than revolutionary, this genealogy suggests an evolutionary process, albeit uneven, linking the computation of past and present. The thesis makes a methodological contribution to the nascent field of algorithmic studies. But more importantly, it renders algorithmic power more intelligible as a material force. Structured and implemented in particular ways, the design of logic and control construct different versions, or modalities, of algorithmic power. This power is political, it calibrates subjectivities towards certain ends, it prioritises space in specific ways, and it privileges particular practices whilst suppressing others. In apprehending operational logics, the practice of method thus foregrounds the sociopolitical dimensions of algorithmic power. As the algorithmic increasingly infiltrates into and governs the everyday, the ability to understand, critique, and intervene in this new field of power becomes more urgent

Entangled Affects: Site-responsive Experiments Using Actor Training Methods

This thesis is an ethnography and critical analysis of a practice as research project that I conducted in the Fall of 2017 to investigate three interstitial sites nested around the Concordia University campus in downtown Montreal. I began with the premise that the body, sensitive and responsive to a site, could engage with it through movement and in so doing, render important aspects of the site palpable. I asked: if the body is available to being moved by the site’s affect, what may be understood about the site through that engagement? In order to explore this notion, I conducted a series of experiments which facilitated participants’ site-responsive movements, as generated through exercises drawn from theatre acting training and from a class in somatic approaches to movement. This interdisciplinary research is grounded in my theatre practice and informed by theory based in the empirical study of performance methods. By applying the training methods towards engagement with the site, I extended them towards a framing as spatial practices, thus creating a platform for critiquing the site. Through this study, I seek to illuminate connections between the site’s social, historical, and economic contexts, its materiality, and the affects that thread into the participants’ experiences. I aim to underline the importance of affect in interstitial spaces, to demonstrate the potential of embodied performance practices to engage with that affect, and to contribute a methodology for generating and analysing qualitative, embodied, site-responsive data

Words, Objects and Events in Economics

This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent

Human-Computer Interaction

In this book the reader will find a collection of 31 papers presenting different facets of Human Computer Interaction, the result of research projects and experiments as well as new approaches to design user interfaces. The book is organized according to the following main topics in a sequential order: new interaction paradigms, multimodality, usability studies on several interaction mechanisms, human factors, universal design and development methodologies and tools