Water allocation strategies for the Kat Basin in South Africa : comparing negotiation tools and game theory models

Governments and developing agencies promote participatory approaches in solving common pool resource problems, such as in the water sector. Two main participatory approaches have been applied separately, namely negotiation and mediation. In this paper the authors apply the Role-Playing Game that is a component of the Companion Modeling approach, a negotiation procedure, and the Cooperative Game Theory (Shapley value and the Nucleolus solution concepts) that can be mirrored as a mediated mechanism to a water allocation problem in the Kat watershed in South Africa. While the absolute results of the two approaches differ, the negotiation and the cooperative game theory provide similar shares of the benefit allocated to the players from various cooperative arrangements. By evaluating the two approaches, the authors provide useful tips for future extension for both the Role-Playing Games and the Cooperative Game Theory applications.Water Supply and Systems,Water Supply and Sanitation Governance and Institutions,Environmental Economics&Policies,Water Conservation,Town Water Supply and Sanitation

A Review on Intelligent Agent Systems

Multi-agent system (MAS) is a common way of exploiting the potential power of agent by combining many agents in one system. Each agent in a multivalent system has incomplete information and is in capable of solving entire problem on its own. Multi-agent system offers modularity. If a problem domain is particularly complex, large and contain uncertainty, then the one way to address, it to develop a number of functional specific and modular agent that are specialized at solving various problems individually. It also consists of heterogeneous agents implemented by different tool and techniques. MAS can be defining as loosely coupled network of problem solvers that interact to solve problems that are beyond the individual capabilities or knowledge of each problem solver. These problem solvers, often ailed agent are autonomous and can be heterogeneous in nature. MAS is followed by characteristics, Future application, What to be change, problem solving agent, tools and techniques used, various architecture, multi agent applications and finally future Direction and conclusion. Various Characteristics are limited viewpoint, effectively, decentralized; computation is asynchronous, use of genetic algorithms. It has some drawbacks which must be change to make MAS more effective. In the session of problem solving of MAS, the agent performance measure contains many factors to improve it like formulation of problems, task allocation, organizations. In planning of multivalent this paper cover self-interested multivalent interactions, modeling of other agents, managing communication, effective allocation of limited resources to multiple agents with managing resources. Using of tool, to make the agent more efficient in task that are often used. The architecture o MAS followed by three layers, explore, wander, avoid obstacles respectively. Further different and task decomposition can yield various architecture like BDI (Belief Desire Intension), RETSINA. Various applications of multi agent system exist today, to solve the real-life problems, new systems are being developed two distinct categories and also many others like process control, telecommunication, air traffic control, transportation systems, commercial management, electronic commerce, entertainment applications, medical applications. The future aspect of MAS to solve problems that are too large, to allow interconnection and interoperation of multiple existing legacy systems etc

Inclusive governance in non-profit organisations

The study of private non-profit enterprises that offer general interest services is only at the start. The understanding of existing organisations resists an inclusive, public interest view of governance. This contribution aims at providing a reflection on specific features that non-profit enterprises should have, and outlines four main justifications for including stakeholders in production governance: 1) access to knowledge and other resources, 2) trust creation, 3) internal efficiency, 4) external efficiency. Conclusions elaborate on Hansmann’s classic theory of the firm to suggest that governance solutions need to be assessed on the basis of total costs, considering also the lower level of social costs that is created when governance includes relevant stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multi-stakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives

Evidence-based careflow management systems: the case of post-stroke rehabilitation

AbstractThe activities of a care providers’ team need to be coordinated within a process properly designed on the basis of available best practice medical knowledge. It requires a rethinking of the management of care processes within health care organizations. The current workflow technology seems to offer the most convenient solution to build such cooperative systems. However, some of its present weaknesses still require an intense research effort to find solutions allowing its exploitation in real medical practice. This paper presents an approach to design and build evidence-based careflow management systems, which can be viewed as components of a knowledge management infrastructure each health care organization should be provided with to increase its performance in delivering high quality care by efficiently exploiting the available knowledge resources. The post-stroke rehabilitation process has been taken as a challenging care problem to assess our methodology for designing and developing careflow management systems. Then a system was co-developed with a team of rehabilitation professionals who will be committed to use it in their daily work. The system’s main goal is to deliver a full array of rehabilitation services provided by an interdisciplinary team. They are related to identify which patients are most likely to benefit from rehabilitation, manage a rehabilitation treatment plan, and monitor progress both during rehabilitation and after return to a community residence. A model of the rehabilitation process was derived from an international guideline and adapted to the local organization of work. It involves different organizational units, such as wards, rehabilitation units, clinical laboratories, and imaging services. Several organizational agents work within them and play one or more roles. Each role is defined by the goals’ set that she/he must fulfill. Special effort has been given to the design and development of a knowledge-based system for managing exceptions, which may occur in daily medical work as any deviation from the normal flow of activities. It allows either avoiding or recovering automatically from expected exceptions. When they are not expected, organizational agents, with enough power to do that, are allowed to modify the scheduled flow of activities for an individual patient under the only constraint of justifying their decision. After an intensive testing in a research laboratory, the system is now in the process of being transferred in a real working setting with the full support of its future users

Fairness aspects in personnel scheduling

In industries like health care, public transport or call centers a shift-based system ensures permanent availability of employees for covering needed services. The resource allocation problem – assigning employees to shifts – is known as personnel scheduling in literature and often aims at minimizing staffing costs. Working in shifts, though, impacts employees’ private lives which adds to the problem of increasing staff shortage in recent years. Therefore, more and more effort is spent on incorporating fairness into scheduling approaches in order to increase employees’ satisfaction. This paper presents a literature review of approaches for personnel scheduling considering fairness aspects. Since fairness is not a quantitative objective, but can be evaluated from different point of views, a large number of fairness measurements exists in the literature. Furthermore, perspective (group vs individual fairness) or time horizon (short-term vs long-term fairness) are often considered very differently. To conclude, we show that a uniform definition and approach for considering fairness in personnel scheduling is challenging and point out gaps for future research

Social Services Viewed Through New Lenses: Agency Problems in Education and Health in Latin America

Latin America spends large amounts of resources on social services, yet its life expectancy and education levels are low compared to other regions with similar levels of income. A key reason is the inherent difficulty of making social services produce efficiently in reponse to demands and needs. This article shows how improving the organization of these service systems can make a significant difference in health conditions and student learning. A general framework applying the lessons of theories of the firm to the particularities of social services is developed, followed by a summary of case studies which assessed the impact of organization on performance in education (in Brazil, Venezuela and Chile), and in health (in Uruguay, Chile and the Dominican Republic). The paper shows that the relationships and rules followed by governments, service providers, and consumers can mean the difference between success and failure. It also describes a wealth of approaches, some of them with long histories, that point toward better ways of organizing social services and ultimately improving health and education in the region. This document is the first chapter of the Research Network book entitled "La organizacion marca la diferencia: Educación y salud en América Latina. "

MODELING THE VALUE OF HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTION AND LEISURE TIME: AN HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

Consumer/Household Economics,

A Comprehensive Survey of the Tactile Internet: State of the art and Research Directions

The Internet has made several giant leaps over the years, from a fixed to a mobile Internet, then to the Internet of Things, and now to a Tactile Internet. The Tactile Internet goes far beyond data, audio and video delivery over fixed and mobile networks, and even beyond allowing communication and collaboration among things. It is expected to enable haptic communication and allow skill set delivery over networks. Some examples of potential applications are tele-surgery, vehicle fleets, augmented reality and industrial process automation. Several papers already cover many of the Tactile Internet-related concepts and technologies, such as haptic codecs, applications, and supporting technologies. However, none of them offers a comprehensive survey of the Tactile Internet, including its architectures and algorithms. Furthermore, none of them provides a systematic and critical review of the existing solutions. To address these lacunae, we provide a comprehensive survey of the architectures and algorithms proposed to date for the Tactile Internet. In addition, we critically review them using a well-defined set of requirements and discuss some of the lessons learned as well as the most promising research directions