Optimizing the Prioritization of Natural Disaster Recovery Projects

Prioritizing reconstruction projects to recover a base from a natural disaster is a complicated and arduous process that involves all levels of leadership. The project prioritization phase of base recovery has a direct affect on the allocation of funding, the utilization of human resources, the obligation of projects, and the overall speed and efficiency of the recovery process. The focus of this research is the development of an objective and repeatable process for optimizing the project prioritization phase of the recovery effort. This work will focus on promoting objectivity in the project prioritizing process, improving the communication of the overall base recovery requirement, increasing efficiency in utilizing human and monetary resources, and the creation of a usable and repeatable decision-making tool based on Value-Focused Thinking and integer programming methods

Stakeholder-driven multi-attribute analysis for energy project selection under uncertainty

In practice, selecting an energy project for development requires balancing criteria and competing stakeholder priorities to identify the best alternative. Energy source selection can be modeled as multi-criteria decision-maker problems to provide quantitative support to reconcile technical, economic, environmental, social, and political factors with respect to the stakeholders' interests. Decision making among these complex interactions should also account for the uncertainty present in the input data. In response, this work develops a stochastic decision analysis framework to evaluate alternatives by involving stakeholders to identify both quantitative and qualitative selection criteria and performance metrics which carry uncertainties. The developed framework is illustrated using a case study from Fairbanks, Alaska, where decision makers and residents must decide on a new source of energy for heating and electricity. We approach this problem in a five step methodology: (1) engaging experts (role players) to develop criteria of project performance; (2) collecting a range of quantitative and qualitative input information to determine the performance of each proposed solution according to the selected criteria; (3) performing a Monte-Carlo analysis to capture uncertainties given in the inputs; (4) applying multi-criteria decision-making, social choice (voting), and fallback bargaining methods to account for three different levels of cooperation among the stakeholders; and (5) computing an aggregate performance index (API) score for each alternative based on its performance across criteria and cooperation levels. API scores communicate relative performance between alternatives. In this way, our methodology maps uncertainty from the input data to reflect risk in the decision and incorporates varying degrees of cooperation into the analysis to identify an optimal and practical alternative

Sustainability as a Multi-criteria Concept

Sustainability is a fairly old concept, born in the 18th century in the field of forestry, within a mono-functionality perspective. The concept has considerably evolved in the last few years towards a multi-functionality context, with applications reported in practically all areas of economic interest. On the other hand, modern sustainability is a complex problem, for two reasons: a) The multiplicity of functions of a very different nature involved in the process and b) The manner in which different segments of the society or stakeholders perceive the relative importance of these functions. For the above reasons, a realistic approach for dealing with the sustainability issue requires taking into consideration multiple criteria of different nature (economic, environmental and social), and in many cases within a participatory decision making framework. This book presents a collection of papers, dealing with different theoretical and applied issues of sustainability, with the help of a modern multi-criteria decision-making theory, with a single as well as several stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Hopefully, this material will encourage academics and practitioners to alter their research in this hot and vital topic. After all, the sustainable management of the environment and its embedded resources is one of the most important, if not the major challenge of the 21st century

The effectiveness of IF-MADM (intuitionistic-fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making) for group decisions: methods and an empirical assessment for the selection of a senior centre

This study determines the effectiveness of intuitionistic-fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making (IF-MADM) for making group decisions in practice. The effectiveness of the method is measured in terms of four dimensions: applicability, efficacy, efficiency and informativeness. To measure the efficacy, an IF-MADM model that has been recently proposed, AHP and the TOPSIS approach, which are compensatory models for group MADM, are used to model and solve the same collective decision. Using non-parametric statistical tests for data analytics, a ‘similarity confirmation method’ is proposed for a pair-wise test. This is to determine whether the score vectors are similar. Score vectors are used to determine the final ordinal ranks and whose scales differ greatly for different MADM methods. Since the latter two MADM models are both trustworthy with a known range of applications, any similarity in the results verifies the efficacy of IF-MADM. Using this process, the applicability of IF-MADM modelling is demonstrated. The efficiency and informativeness are also benchmarked and justified in terms of the model’s ability to produce a more informed decision. These results are of interest to practitioners for the selection and application of MADM models. Finally, the selection of a senior centre, which is a real group decision problem, is used to illustrate these. This extends the empirical application of IF-MADM, as relatively few studies practically compare issues for IF-MADM with those for other MADM models. The study also supports a rarely studied non-clinical healthcare decision that is relevant because there are many aging societies

Contributions to the selection and implementation of standard software for CRM and electronic invoicing

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Noncommutative Logic Systems with Applications in Management and Engineering

Zadeh's (min-max, standard) fuzzy logic and various other logics are commutative, but natural language has nuances suggesting the premises are not equal, with premises contributing to the conclusion according to their prominency. Therefore, we suggest variants of salience-based, noncommutative and non-associative fuzzy logic (prominence logic) that may better model natural language and reasoning when using linguistic variables. Noncommutative fuzzy logics have several theoretical and applicative motivations to be used as models for human inference and decision making processes. Among others, asymmetric relations in economy and management, such as buyer-seller, provider-user, and employer-employee are noncommutative relations and induce noncommutative logic operations between premises or conclusions. A class of noncommutative fuzzy logic operators is introduced and fuzzy logic systems based on the corresponding noncommutative logics are described and analyzed. The prominence of the operators in the noncommutative operations is conventionally assumed to be determined by their precedence. Specific versions of noncommutative logics in the class of the salience-based, noncommutative logics are discussed. We show how fuzzy logic systems may be built based on these types of logics. Compared with classic fuzzy systems, the noncommutative fuzzy logic systems have improved performances in modeling problems, including the modeling of economic and social processes, and offer more flexibility in approximation and control. Applications discussed include management and engineering problems and issues in the field of firms’ ethics or ethics of AI algorithms

Fuzzy Multi-Objective Linear Programming and Simulation Approach to the Development of Valid and Realistic Master Production Schedule

Master production schedule (MPS) plays an important role in an integrated production planning system. It converts the strategic planning defined in a production plan into the tactical operation execution. The MPS is also known as a tool for top management to control over manufacture resources and becomes input of the downstream planning levels such as material requirement planning (MRP) and capacity requirement planning (CRP). Hence, inappropriate decision on the MPS development may lead to infeasible execution, which ultimately causes poor delivery performance. One must ensure that the proposed MPS is valid and realistic for implementation before it is released to real manufacturing system. In practice, where production environment is stochastic in nature, the development of MPS is no longer simple task. The varying processing time, random event such as machine failure is just some of the underlying causes of uncertainty that may be hardly addressed at planning stage so that in the end the valid and realistic MPS is tough to be realized. The MPS creation problem becomes even more sophisticated as decision makers try to consider multi-objectives; minimizing inventory, maximizing customer satisfaction, and maximizing resource utilization. This study attempts to propose a methodology for MPS creation which is able to deal with those obstacles. This approach takes into account uncertainty and makes trade off among conflicting multi-objectives at the same time. It incorporates fuzzy multi-objective linear programming (FMOLP) and discrete event simulation (DES) for MPS development

Decision-making in fuzzy environment

Decision-making is a logical human judgment process for identifying and choosing alternatives based on the values and preferences of the decision maker that mostly applied in the managerial level of the concerned department of the organization/ supply chain. Recently, decision-making has gained immense popularity in industries because of their global competitiveness and to survive successfully in respective marketplace.Therefore, decision-making plays a vital role especially in purchase department for reducing material costs, minimizing production time as well as improving the quality of product or service. But, in today’s real life problems, decision-makers generally face lot of confusions, ambiguity due to the involvement of uncertainty and subjectivity in complex evaluating criterions of alternatives. To deal such kind of vagueness in human thought the title ‘Decision-Making in Fuzzy Environment’ has focused into the emerging area of research associated with decision sciences. Multiple and conflicting objectives such as ‘minimize cost’ and ‘maximize quality of service’ are the real stuff of the decision-makers’ daily concerns. Keeping this in mind, this thesis introduces innovative decision aid methodologies for an evaluation cum selection policy analysis, based on theory of multi criteria decision-making tools and fuzzy set theory. In the supplier selection policy, emphasis is placed on compromise solution towards the selection of best supplier among a set of alternative candidate suppliers. The nature of supplier selection process is a complex multi-attribute group decision making (MAGDM) problem which deals with both quantitative and qualitative factors may be conflicting in nature as well as contain incomplete and uncertain information. Therefore, an application of VIKOR method combined with fuzzy logic has been reported as an efficient approach to support decision-making in supplier selection problems. This dissertation also proposes an integrated model for industrial robot selection considering both objective and subjective criteria’s. The concept of Interval-Valued Fuzzy Numbers (IVFNs) combined with VIKOR method has been adapted in this analysis

Evaluation of Rope Shovel Operators in Surface Coal Mining Using a Multi-Attribute Decision-Making Model

Rope shovels are used to dig and load material in surface mines. One of the main factors that influence the productivity and energy consumption of rope shovels is the performance of the operator. Existing methods of evaluating operator performance do not consider the relationship between production rate and energy consumption. This thesis presents a method for evaluating rope shovel operators using the Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) model. Data used in this research were collected from an operating surface coal mine in the southern United States. The MADM model used in this research consists of attributes, their weights of importance, and alternatives. Shovel operators are considered the alternatives in the MADM model. The energy consumption model was developed with multiple regression analysis, and its variables are included in the MADM model as attributes. Formulation of the production rate model is already known, and thus determining the attributes that have a significant influence is straightforward. Preferences with respect to min/max of the defined attributes were obtained with multi-objective optimization. Multi-objective optimization was performed with the overall goal of minimizing energy consumption and maximizing production rate. Weights of importance of the attributes were determined by using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The overall evaluation of operators was performed by using one of the MADM models, PROMETHEE II. The research presented here may be used by mining professionals to help evaluate the performance of rope shovel operators in surface mining

Semantics-aware planning methodology for automatic web service composition

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) has been a major research topic in the past years. It is based on the idea of composing distributed applications even in heterogeneous environments by discovering and invoking network-available Web Services to accomplish some complex tasks when no existing service can satisfy the user request. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a key design principle to facilitate building of these autonomous, platform-independent Web Services. However, in distributed environments, the use of services without considering their underlying semantics, either functional semantics or quality guarantees can negatively affect a composition process by raising intermittent failures or leading to slow performance. More recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) Planning technologies have been exploited to facilitate the automated composition. But most of the AI planning based algorithms do not scale well when the number of Web Services increases, and there is no guarantee that a solution for a composition problem will be found even if it exists. AI Planning Graph tries to address various limitations in traditional AI planning by providing a unique search space in a directed layered graph. However, the existing AI Planning Graph algorithm only focuses on finding complete solutions without taking account of other services which are not achieving the goals. It will result in the failure of creating such a graph in the case that many services are available, despite most of them being irrelevant to the goals. This dissertation puts forward a concept of building a more intelligent planning mechanism which should be a combination of semantics-aware service selection and a goal-directed planning algorithm. Based on this concept, a new planning system so-called Semantics Enhanced web service Mining (SEwsMining) has been developed. Semantic-aware service selection is achieved by calculating on-demand multi-attributes semantics similarity based on semantic annotations (QWSMO-Lite). The planning algorithm is a substantial revision of the AI GraphPlan algorithm. To reduce the size of planning graph, a bi-directional planning strategy has been developed