Revisiting consistency with random utility maximisation: theory and implications for practical work

While the paradigm of utility maximisation has formed the basis of the majority of applications in discrete choice modelling for over 40 years, its core assumptions have been questioned by work in both behavioural economics and mathematical psychology as well as more recently by developments in the RUM-oriented choice modelling community. This paper reviews the basic properties with a view to explaining the historical pre-eminence of utility maximisation and addresses the question of what departures from the paradigm may be necessary or wise in order to accommodate richer behavioural patterns. We find that many, though not all, of the behavioural traits discussed in the literature can be approximated sufficiently closely by a random utility framework, allowing analysts to retain the many advantages that such an approach possesses

Social science in a water observing system

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95008/1/wrcr12336.pd

Early identification of problem interactions: A tool-supported approach

The principle of "divide and conquer" suggests that complex software problems should be decomposed into simpler problems, and those problems should be solved before considering how they can be composed. The eventual composition may fail if solutions to simpler problems interact in unexpected ways. However, early identification of concrete scenarios where interactions happen remains an outstanding issue. In this paper, we propose that logical abduction can be used to efficiently identify all possible failure scenarios when the composition cannot be achieved fully. We present an tool-supported framework that (i) provides a simple diagramming editor for drawing problem diagrams and describing them using the Event Calculus, (ii) structures the Event Calculus formulae of individual problem diagrams for the abduction procedure, (iii) communicates with an off-the-shelf abductive reasoner in the background and relates the results of the abduction procedure to the problem diagrams. With this tool, it becomes possible to highlight at an early stage, problem diagrams that will interact when composed together. The proposed theory and the tool framework are illustrated with an interaction problem from the smart home application