This work presents recent mathematical methods in the area of optimal control with a particular emphasis on the computational aspects and applications. Optimal control theory concerns the determination of control strategies for complex dynamical systems, in order to optimize some measure of their performance. Started in the 60's under the pressure of the "space race" between the US and the former USSR, the field now has a far wider scope, and embraces a variety of areas ranging from process control to traffic flow optimization, renewable resources exploitation and management of financial markets. These emerging applications require more and more efficient numerical methods for their solution, a very difficult task due the huge number of variables. The chapters of this volume give an up-to-date presentation of several recent methods in this area including fast dynamic programming algorithms, model predictive control and max-plus techniques. This book is addressed to researchers, graduate students and applied scientists working in the area of control problems, differential games and their applications.

The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics Galileo Galilei, 1623 Metrology strives to supervise the ?ow of the measurand's true values throughconsecutive,arbitrarilyinterlockingseriesofmeasurements.Tohi- light this feature the term traceability has been coined. Traceability is said to be achieved, given the true values of each of the physical quantities entering and leaving the measurement are localized by speci?ed measu- ment uncertainties. The classical Gaussian error calculus is known to be con?ned to the tre- ment of random errors. Hence, there is no distinction between the true value of a measurand on the one side and the expectation of the respective es- mator on the other. This became apparent not until metrologists considered the e?ect of so-called unknown systematic errors. Unknown systematic errors are time-constant quantities unknown with respect to magnitude and sign. While random errors are treated via distribution densities, unknown syst- atic errors can only be assessed via intervals of estimated lengths. Unknown systematic errors were, in fact, addressed and discussed by Gauss himself. Gauss, however, argued that it were up to the experimenter to eliminate their causes and free the measured values from their in?uence.

This monograph presents controllability and stabilization methods in control theory that solve parabolic boundary value problems. Starting from foundational questions on Carleman inequalities for linear parabolic equations, the author addresses the controllability of parabolic equations on a variety of domains and the spectral decomposition technique for representing them. This method is, in fact, designed for use in a wider class of parabolic systems that include the heat and diffusion equations. Later chapters develop another process that employs stabilizing feedback controllers with a finite number of unstable modes, with special attention given to its use in the boundary stabilization of Navier-Stokes equations for the motion of viscous fluid. In turn, these applied methods are used to explore related topics like the exact controllability of stochastic parabolic equations with linear multiplicative noise. Intended for graduate students and researchers working on control problems involving nonlinear differential equations, Controllability and Stabilization of Parabolic Equations is the distillation of years of lectures and research. With a minimum of preliminaries, the book leaps into its applications for control theory with both concrete examples and accessible solutions to problems in stabilization and controllability that are still areas of current research.

For over a decade, complex networks have steadily grown as an important tool across a broad array of academic disciplines, with applications ranging from physics to social media. A tightly organized collection of carefully-selected papers on the subject, Towards an Information Theory of Complex Networks: Statistical Methods and Applications presents theoretical and practical results about information-theoretic and statistical models of complex networks in the natural sciences and humanities. The book's major goal is to advocate and promote a combination of graph-theoretic, information-theoretic, and statistical methods as a way to better understand and characterize real-world networks. This volume is the first to present a self-contained, comprehensive overview of information-theoretic models of complex networks with an emphasis on applications. As such, it marks a first step toward establishing advanced statistical information theory as a unified theoretical basis of complex networks for all scientific disciplines and can serve as a valuable resource for a diverse audience of advanced students and professional scientists. While it is primarily intended as a reference for research, the book could also be a useful supplemental graduate text in courses related to information science, graph theory, machine learning, and computational biology, among others.

This book deals with critical infrastructure safety analysis based on reliability modelling of multistate ageing system. It shows how changes of the operation process as well as climate-weather changes in the operating area of the critical infrastructure do influence the safety parameters of its assets. Building upon previous authors' research, the book formulates an integrated modeling approach where the multistate critical infrastructure safety model is combined with semi-Markov models for its operation process and for the climate-weather change process. This approach is shown to be successful in determining basic critical infrastructure safety, risk and resilience indicators, regardless of the number of assets and the number of their safety states. Besides the theory, the book reports on a successful application to the safety analysis of a real critical infrastructure, such as a port oil terminal. All in all, this book proposes a comprehensive and timely review of cutting-edge mathematical methods for safety identification, prediction and evaluation of critical infrastructures. It demonstrates that these methods can be applied in practice for analyzing safety of critical infrastructure under time-varying operation and climate-weather change processes.

Conceptually, as well as practically, digitalization is similar to the implementation of a modern computation model - the model may be a centralized setup using a mainframe or it may be extended to an N-tier architecture. Regardless of the specifics of the implementation, however, the conceptual model of data processing remains the same. Digitalization is nothing but a system relying on digital technologies to create, conduct and, potentially, expand a business activity of some sort. Digitalization can be used to create an e-commerce model for a small business or to create a global supply and distribution chain geared toward almost any kind of a business. It could also be used for non-profit purposes, such as on-line education and telemedicine or e-government. Digitalization: Contexts, Roles, and Outcomes is a contemplation and analysis of the socio-technical system that is known as digitalization. It considers the context of digitalization as well as the ways by which digitalization offers value to the context within which it operates. This book aims to offer readers an entry point to a path of inquiry into the different aspects of digitalization. The goal is to identify main directions for further inquiry as well as to outline the most obvious obstacles along the way. The book aims to guide readers on their own unique journeys using the basic ideas, principles, and concepts synthesized, developed, and presented in the book. It is beneficial to both practitioners and researchers. The book covers: The functionality of digitalization The significance of digitalization Identifying the context of digitalization Designing a control system A cognitive model for the theory of digitalization Designing a theory of digitalization The book helps readers to consider the subject of digitalization in a rigorous and rational way so their own perspectives can emerge stronger and be substantiated and reinforced by building an argument vis-a-vis perspectives and points examined in this book.

This volume is the proceedings of the Workshop on Optimal Design and Control that was held in Blacksburg, Virginia, April 8-9, 1994. The workshop was spon sored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research through the Air Force Center for Optimal Design and Control (CODAC) at Virginia Tech. The workshop was a gathering of engineers and mathematicians actively in volved in innovative research in control and optimization, with emphasis placed on problems governed by partial differential equations. The interdisciplinary nature of the workshop and the wide range of subdisciplines represented by the partici pants enabled an exchange of valuable information and also led to significant dis cussions about multidisciplinary optimization issues. One of the goals of the work shop was to include laboratory, industrial, and academic researchers so that anal yses, algorithms, implementations, and applications could all be well-represented in the talks; this interdisciplinary nature is reflected in these proceedings. An overriding impression that can be gleaned from the papers in this volume is the complexity of problems addressed by not only those authors engaged in appli cations, but also by those engaged in algorithmic development and even mathemat ical analyses. Thus, in many instances, systematic approaches using fully nonlin ear constraint equations are routinely used to solve control and optimization prob lems, in some cases replacing ad-hoc or empirically based procedures."

Within this carefully presented monograph, the authors extend the universal phenomenon of synchronization from finite-dimensional dynamical systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) to infinite-dimensional dynamical systems of partial differential equations (PDEs). By combining synchronization with controllability, they introduce the study of synchronization to the field of control and add new perspectives to the investigation of synchronization for systems of PDEs. With a focus on synchronization for a coupled system of wave equations, the text is divided into three parts corresponding to Dirichlet, Neumann, and coupled Robin boundary controls. Each part is then subdivided into chapters detailing exact boundary synchronization and approximate boundary synchronization, respectively. The core intention is to give artificial intervention to the evolution of state variables through appropriate boundary controls for realizing the synchronization in a finite time, creating a novel viewpoint into the investigation of synchronization for systems of partial differential equations, and revealing some essentially dissimilar characteristics from systems of ordinary differential equations. Primarily aimed at researchers and graduate students of applied mathematics and applied sciences, this text will particularly appeal to those interested in applied PDEs and control theory for distributed parameter systems.

The phenomenal international bestseller that shows us how to stop trying to predict everything - and take advantage of uncertainty What have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why are all forecasters con-artists? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper? This book is all about Black Swans: the random events that underlie our lives, from bestsellers to world disasters. Their impact is huge; they're impossible to predict; yet after they happen we always try to rationalize them. 'Taleb is a bouncy and even exhilarating guide ... I came to relish what he said, and even develop a sneaking affection for him as a person' Will Self, Independent on Sunday 'He leaps like some superhero of the mind' Boyd Tonkin, Independent

This volume contains the invited paper, the reviewed research papers, the discussants' comments on the latter, and the workshop memoranda of the fourth IFIP WG 8. 1 International Working Conference on "Information System Concepts," with the subtitle "An Integrated Discipline Emerging" (ISC04). It was held in Leiden, The Netherlands, 20-22 September 1999. The previous three ISCO conferences were subtitled "An In-depth Analysis," "Improving the Understanding," and "Towards a Consolidation of Views." Their proceedings were published in 1989, 1992, and 1995, respectively. The ISCO conferences were instigated by the former Task Group FRISCO (an acronym for "FRamework of Information System Concepts"), charged by the IFIP Working Group 8. 1 with the task of proposing a conceptual framework for the information system field. Its report, entitled "A Framework of Information System Concepts" (the "FRISCO Report" for short), is available on the World Wide Web via the address: http: //www. wi. leidenuniv. nl/ verrynstlfrisco. html or may be downloaded directly as a condensed Word-6 file from: ftp: //ftp. leidenuniv. nl/pub/rullfri-full. zip The FRISCO Report forms a significant contribution to the long-lasting quest of our community towards developing a scientific outlook on the field of information systems. Clarifying the varied nature of many diverging views - some of which may not easily be reconciled - the report does propose a coherent, consistent and partially formalised framework of concepts.

Coding for Channels with Feedback presents both algorithms for feedback coding and performance analyses of these algorithms, including analyses of perhaps the most important performance criterion: computational complexity. The algorithms are developed within a single framework, termed the compressed-error-cancellation framework, where data are sent via a sequence of messages: the first message contains the original data; each subsequent message contains a source-coded description of the channel distortions introduced on the message preceding it. Coding for Channels with Feedback provides an easily understood and flexible framework for deriving low-complexity, practical solutions to a wide variety of feedback communication problems. It is shown that the compressed-error-cancellation framework leads to coding schemes with the lowest possible asymptotic order of growth of computations and can be applied to discrete memoryless channels, finite state channels, channels with memory, unknown channels, and multiple-access channels, all with complete noiseless feedback, as well as to channels with partial and noisy feedback. This framework leads to coding strategies that have linear complexity and are capacity achieving, and illustrates the intimate connection between source coding theory and channel coding theory. Coding for Channels with Feedback is an excellent reference for researchers and communication engineers in the field of information theory, and can be used for advanced courses on the topic.

This book offers the first systematic account of canard cycles, an intriguing phenomenon in the study of ordinary differential equations. The canard cycles are treated in the general context of slow-fast families of two-dimensional vector fields. The central question of controlling the limit cycles is addressed in detail and strong results are presented with complete proofs. In particular, the book provides a detailed study of the structure of the transitions near the critical set of non-isolated singularities. This leads to precise results on the limit cycles and their bifurcations, including the so-called canard phenomenon and canard explosion. The book also provides a solid basis for the use of asymptotic techniques. It gives a clear understanding of notions like inner and outer solutions, describing their relation and precise structure. The first part of the book provides a thorough introduction to slow-fast systems, suitable for graduate students. The second and third parts will be of interest to both pure mathematicians working on theoretical questions such as Hilbert's 16th problem, as well as to a wide range of applied mathematicians looking for a detailed understanding of two-scale models found in electrical circuits, population dynamics, ecological models, cellular (FitzHugh-Nagumo) models, epidemiological models, chemical reactions, mechanical oscillators with friction, climate models, and many other models with tipping points.

This textbook is a concise yet precise supplement to traditional books on Signals and Systems, focusing exclusively on the continuous-time case. Students can use this guide to review material, reinforce their understanding, and see how all the parts connect together in a uniform treatment focused on mathematical clarity. Readers learn the "what", "why" and "how" about the ubiquitous Fourier and Laplace transforms encountered in the study of linear time-invariant systems in engineering: what are these transforms, why do we need them, and how do we use them? Readers will come away with an understanding of the gradual progression from time-domain analysis to frequency-domain and s-domain techniques for continuous-time linear time-invariant systems. This book reflects the author's experience in teaching this material for over 25 years in sophomore- and junior-level required engineering courses and is ideal for undergraduate classes in electrical engineering.

This book contains the proceedings as well as invited papers for the first annual conference of the UNESCO Unitwin Complex System Digital Campus (CSDC), which is an international initiative gathering 120 Universities on four continents, and structured in ten E-Departments. First Complex Systems Digital Campus World E-Conference 2015 features chapters from the latest research results on theoretical questions of complex systems and their experimental domains. The content contained bridges the gap between the individual and the collective within complex systems science and new integrative sciences on topics such as: genes to organisms to ecosystems, atoms to materials to products, and digital media to the Internet. The conference breaks new ground through a dedicated video-conferencing system - a concept at the heart of the international UNESCO UniTwin, embracing scientists from low-income and distant countries. This book promotes an integrated system of research, education, and training. It also aims at contributing to global development by taking into account its social, economic, and cultural dimensions. First Complex Systems Digital Campus World E-Conference 2015 will appeal to students and researchers working in the fields of complex systems, statistical physics, computational intelligence, and biological physics.

A graduate-level textbook, Hybrid Dynamical Systems provides an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the theory of hybrid systems. It emphasizes results that are central to a good understanding of the importance and role of such systems. The authors have developed the materials in this book while teaching courses on hybrid systems, cyber-physical systems, and formal methods. This textbook helps students to become familiar with both the major approaches coloring the study of hybrid dynamical systems. The computer science and control systems points of view - emphasizing discrete dynamics and real time, and continuous dynamics with switching, respectively - are each covered in detail. The book shows how the behavior of a system with tightly coupled cyber- (discrete) and physical (continuous) elements can best be understood by a model simultaneously encompassing all the dynamics and their interconnections. The theory presented is of fundamental importance in a wide range of emerging fields from next-generation transportation systems to smart manufacturing.Features of the text include: extensive use of examples to illustrate the main concepts and to provide insights additional to those acquired from the main text; chapter summaries enabling students to assess their progress; end-of-chapter exercises, which test learning as a course proceeds; an instructor's guide showing how different parts of the book can be exploited for different course requirements; and a solutions manual, freely available for download by instructors adopting the book for their teaching. Access to MATLAB and Stateflow is not required but would be beneficial, especially for exercises in which simulations are a key tool.

Control networks span a wide range of application areas. These networks are put into action in the `Digital Home', industrial applications, commercial buildings, transportation systems, gas stations, security systems, and they are found in most instances where smart sensors and smart actuators are used to exchange information. The authors of this volume provide an overview of various control network protocols and discuss LonTalk (R) protocol, Neuron (R) chip, programming model, network structures, network management, interoperability between nodes, application profiles, development and maintenance tools, performance analysis, and standardization activities. Open Control Networks: LonWorks/EIA 709 Technology will be an important resource for advanced students of control systems and embedded systems, engineers designing distributed networks, systems designers and architects, and others developing smart buildings and intelligent transportation systems.

Object-Oriented Computer Simulation of Discrete-Event Systems offers a comprehensive presentation of a wide repertoire of computer simulation techniques available to the modelers of dynamic systems. Unlike other books on simulation, this book includes a complete and balanced description of all essential issues relevant to computer simulation of discrete event systems, and it teaches simulation users how to design, program and exploit their own computer simulation models. In addition, it uses the object-oriented methodology throughout the book as its main programming platform. The reader is expected to have some background in the theory of probability and statistics and only a little programming experience in C++, as the book is not tied down to any particular simulation language. The book also provides 50 complete simulation problems to assist with writing such simulation programs. Object-Oriented Computer Simulation of Discrete-Event Systems demonstrates the basic and generic concepts used in computer simulation of discrete-event systems in a comprehensive, uniform and self-contained manner.

Model integration - the process by which different modelling efforts can be brought together to simulate the target system - is a core technology in the field of Systems Biology. In the work presented here model integration was addressed directly taking cancer systems as an example. An in-depth literature review was carried out to survey the model forms and types currently being utilised. This was used to formalise the main challenges that model integration poses, namely that of paradigm (the formalism on which a model is based), focus (the real-world system the model represents) and scale.

A two-tier model integration strategy, including a knowledge-driven approach to address model semantics, was developed to tackle these challenges. In the first step a novel description of models at the level of behaviour, rather than the precise mathematical or computational basis of the model, is developed by distilling a set of abstract classes and properties. These can accurately describe model behaviour and hence describe focus in a way that can be integrated with behavioural descriptions of other models. In the second step this behaviour is decomposed into an agent-based system by translating the models into local interaction rules.

The book provides a detailed and highly integrated presentation of the method, encompassing both its novel theoretical and practical aspects, which will enable the reader to practically apply it to their model integration needs in academic research and professional settings. The text is self-supporting. It also includes an in-depth current bibliography to relevant research papers and literature. The review of the current state of the art in tumour modelling provides added value.

This book gives the definitive mathematical answer to what thermodynamics really is: a variational calculus applied to probability distributions. Extending Gibbs's notion of ensemble, the Author imagines the ensemble of all possible probability distributions and assigns probabilities to them by selection rules that are fairly general. The calculus of the most probable distribution in the ensemble produces the entire network of mathematical relationships we recognize as thermodynamics. The first part of the book develops the theory for discrete and continuous distributions while the second part applies this thermodynamic calculus to problems in population balance theory and shows how the emergence of a giant component in aggregation, and the shattering transition in fragmentation may be treated as formal phase transitions. While the book is intended as a research monograph, the material is self-contained and the style sufficiently tutorial to be accessible for self-paced study by an advanced graduate student in such fields as physics, chemistry, and engineering.

This volume collects various contributions from the 5th International Conference on Jets, Wakes and Separated Flows (ICJWSF2015) that took place in Stockholm during June 2015. Researchers from all around the world presented their latest results concerning fundamental and applied aspects of fluid dynamics. With its general character, the conference embraced many aspects of fluid dynamics, such as shear flows, multiphase flows and vortex flows, for instance. The structure of the present book reflects the variety of topics treated within the conference i.e. Jets, Wakes, Separated flows, Vehicle aerodynamics, Wall-bounded and confined flows, Noise, Turbomachinery flows, Multiphase and reacting flows, Vortex dynamics, Energy-related flows and a section dedicated to Numerical analyses.

This book highlights cutting-edge research in the field of network science, offering scientists, researchers and graduate students a unique opportunity to catch up on the latest advances in theory and a multitude of applications. It presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the fifth International Workshop on Complex Networks & their Applications (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2016), which took place in Milan during the last week of November 2016. The carefully selected papers are divided into 11 sections reflecting the diversity and richness of research areas in the field. More specifically, the following topics are covered: Network models; Network measures; Community structure; Network dynamics; Diffusion, epidemics and spreading processes; Resilience and control; Network visualization; Social and political networks; Networks in finance and economics; Biological and ecological networks; and Network analysis.

This book presents state-of-the-art research on security and privacy- preserving for IoT and 5G networks and applications. The accepted book chapters covered many themes, including traceability and tamper detection in IoT enabled waste management networks, secure Healthcare IoT Systems, data transfer accomplished by trustworthy nodes in cognitive radio, DDoS Attack Detection in Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) for 5G Networks, Mobile Edge-Cloud Computing, biometric authentication systems for IoT applications, and many other applications It aspires to provide a relevant reference for students, researchers, engineers, and professionals working in this particular area or those interested in grasping its diverse facets and exploring the latest advances on security and privacy- preserving for IoT and 5G networks.

Structured Controllers for Uncertain Systems focuses on the development of easy-to-use design strategies for robust low-order or fixed-structure controllers (particularly the industrially ubiquitous PID controller). These strategies are based on a recently-developed stochastic optimization method termed the Heuristic Kalman Algorithm (HKA) the use of which results in a simplified methodology that enables the solution of the structured control problem without a profusion of user-defined parameters. An overview of the main stochastic methods employable in the context of continuous non-convex optimization problems is also provided and various optimization criteria for the design of a structured controller are considered; H infinity, H2, and mixed H2/Hinfinity each merits a chapter to itself. Time-domain-performance specifications can be easily incorporated in the design.