This book provides a practice-driven, yet rigorous approach to executive management decision-making that performs well even under unpredictable conditions. It explains how executives can employ prescribed engineering design methods to arrive at robust outcomes even when faced with uncontrollable uncertainty. The book presents the paradigm and its main principles in Part I; in Part II it illustrates how to frame a decision situation and how to design the decision so that it will produce its intended behavior. In turn, Part III discusses in detail in situ case studies on executive management decisions. Lastly, Part IV summarizes the book and formulates the key lessons learned.

This book systematically studies how game theory can be used to improve security in chemical industrial areas, capturing the intelligent interactions between security managers and potential adversaries. The recent unfortunate terrorist attacks on critical infrastructures show that adversaries are intelligent and strategic. Game theoretic models have been extensively used in some domains to model these strategic adversaries. However, there is a lack of such advanced models to be employed by chemical security managers. In this book, game theoretic models for protecting chemical plants as well as clusters are proposed. Different equilibrium concepts are explored, with user-friendly explanation of how to reflect them to realistic cases. Based on efficient analysis of the properties of security issues in chemical plants/clusters, models in this book are capable to support resources allocations, cost-effectiveness analysis, cooperation incentives and alike.

Optimization is an important tool used in decision science and for the analysis of physical systems used in engineering. One can trace its roots to the Calculus of Variations and the work of Euler and Lagrange. This natural and reasonable approach to mathematical programming covers numerical methods for finite-dimensional optimization problems. It begins with very simple ideas progressing through more complicated concepts, concentrating on methods for both unconstrained and constrained optimization.

This book covers various topics regarding the design of compliant mechanisms using topology optimization that have attracted a great deal of attention in recent decades. After comprehensively describing state-of-the-art methods for designing compliant mechanisms, it provides a new topology optimization method for finding new flexure hinges. It then presents several attempts to obtain distributed compliant mechanisms using the topology optimization method. Further, it discusses a Jacobian-based topology optimization method for compliant parallel mechanisms, and introduces readers to the topology optimization of compliant mechanisms, taking into account geometrical nonlinearity and reliability. Providing a systematic method for topology optimization of flexure hinges, which are essential for designing compliant mechanisms, the book offers a valuable resource for all readers who are interested in designing compliant mechanism-based positioning stages. In addition, the methods for solving the de facto hinges in topology optimized compliant mechanisms will benefit all engineers seeking to design micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) structures.

This volume contains the proceedings of the XII Symposium of Probability and Stochastic Processes which took place at Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan in Merida, Mexico, on November 16-20, 2015. This meeting was the twelfth meeting in a series of ongoing biannual meetings aimed at showcasing the research of Mexican probabilists as well as promote new collaborations between the participants. The book features articles drawn from different research areas in probability and stochastic processes, such as: risk theory, limit theorems, stochastic partial differential equations, random trees, stochastic differential games, stochastic control, and coalescence. Two of the main manuscripts survey recent developments on stochastic control and scaling limits of Markov-branching trees, written by Kazutoshi Yamasaki and Benedicte Haas, respectively. The research-oriented manuscripts provide new advances in active research fields in Mexico. The wide selection of topics makes the book accessible to advanced graduate students and researchers in probability and stochastic processes.

This book presents tools and methods for large-scale and distributed optimization. Since many methods in "Big Data" fields rely on solving large-scale optimization problems, often in distributed fashion, this topic has over the last decade emerged to become very important. As well as specific coverage of this active research field, the book serves as a powerful source of information for practitioners as well as theoreticians. Large-Scale and Distributed Optimization is a unique combination of contributions from leading experts in the field, who were speakers at the LCCC Focus Period on Large-Scale and Distributed Optimization, held in Lund, 14th-16th June 2017. A source of information and innovative ideas for current and future research, this book will appeal to researchers, academics, and students who are interested in large-scale optimization.

This book surveys new algorithmic approaches and applications to natural and man-made disasters such as oil spills, hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. Based on the "Third International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters" held in Kalamata, Greece, July 2017, this Work includes contributions in evacuation logistics, disaster communications between first responders, disaster relief, and a case study on humanitarian logistics. Multi-disciplinary theories, tools, techniques and methodologies are linked with disasters from mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery. The interdisciplinary approach to problems in economics, optimization, government, management, business, humanities, engineering, medicine, mathematics, computer science, behavioral studies, emergency services, and environmental studies will engage readers from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds.

This book explores the updated version of the GLOBAL algorithm which contains improvements for a local search algorithm and new Java implementations. Efficiency comparisons to earlier versions and on the increased speed achieved by the parallelization, are detailed. Examples are provided for students as well as researchers and practitioners in optimization, operations research, and mathematics to compose their own scripts with ease. A GLOBAL manual is presented in the appendix to assist new users with modules and test functions. GLOBAL is a successful stochastic multistart global optimization algorithm that has passed several computational tests, and is efficient and reliable for small to medium dimensional global optimization problems. The algorithm uses clustering to ensure efficiency and is modular in regard to the two local search methods it starts with, but it can also easily apply other local techniques. The strength of this algorithm lies in its reliability and adaptive algorithm parameters. The GLOBAL algorithm is free to download also in the earlier Fortran, C, and MATLAB implementations.

This book contains three well-written research tutorials that inform the graduate reader about the forefront of current research in multi-agent optimization. These tutorials cover topics that have not yet found their way in standard books and offer the reader the unique opportunity to be guided by major researchers in the respective fields. Multi-agent optimization, lying at the intersection of classical optimization, game theory, and variational inequality theory, is at the forefront of modern optimization and has recently undergone a dramatic development. It seems timely to provide an overview that describes in detail ongoing research and important trends. This book concentrates on Distributed Optimization over Networks; Differential Variational Inequalities; and Advanced Decomposition Algorithms for Multi-agent Systems. This book will appeal to both mathematicians and mathematically oriented engineers and will be the source of inspiration for PhD students and researchers.

The series is designed to bring together those mathematicians who are seriously interested in getting new challenging stimuli from economic theories with those economists who are seeking effective mathematical tools for their research. A lot of economic problems can be formulated as constrained optimizations and equilibration of their solutions. Various mathematical theories have been supplying economists with indispensable machineries for these problems arising in economic theory. Conversely, mathematicians have been stimulated by various mathematical difficulties raised by economic theories.

The present volume contains invited talks of 11th biennial conference on "Emerging Mathematical Methods, Models and Algorithms for Science and Technology". The main message of the book is that mathematics has a great potential to analyse and understand the challenging problems of nanotechnology, biotechnology, medical science, oil industry and financial technology. The book highlights all the features and main theme discussed in the conference. All contributing authors are eminent academicians, scientists, researchers and scholars in their respective fields, hailing from around the world.

How do people living in small groups without money, markets, police and rigid social classes develop norms of economic and social cooperation that are sustainable over time? This book addresses this fundamental question and explains the origin, structure and spread of stateless societies. Using insights from game theory, ethnography and archaeology, Stanish shows how ritual - broadly defined - is the key. Ritual practices encode elaborate rules of behavior and are ingenious mechanisms of organizing society in the absence of coercive states. As well as asking why and how people choose to co-operate, Stanish also provides the theoretical framework to understand this collective action problem. He goes on to highlight the evolution of cooperation with ethnographic and archaeological data from around of the world. Merging evolutionary game theory concepts with cultural evolutionary theory, this book will appeal to those seeking a transdisciplinary approach to one of the greatest problems in human evolution.

Model Predictive Control (MPC), the dominant advanced control approach in industry over the past twenty-five years, is presented comprehensively in this unique book. With a simple, unified approach, and with attention to real-time implementation, it covers predictive control theory including the stability, feasibility, and robustness of MPC controllers. The theory of explicit MPC, where the nonlinear optimal feedback controller can be calculated efficiently, is presented in the context of linear systems with linear constraints, switched linear systems, and, more generally, linear hybrid systems. Drawing upon years of practical experience and using numerous examples and illustrative applications, the authors discuss the techniques required to design predictive control laws, including algorithms for polyhedral manipulations, mathematical and multiparametric programming and how to validate the theoretical properties and to implement predictive control policies. The most important algorithms feature in an accompanying free online MATLAB toolbox, which allows easy access to sample solutions. Predictive Control for Linear and Hybrid Systems is an ideal reference for graduate, postgraduate and advanced control practitioners interested in theory and/or implementation aspects of predictive control.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Algorithmic Game Theory, SAGT 2018, held in Beijing, China, in September 2018. The 19 full papers presented together with 6 short papers and 5 plenary talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 54 submissions. The papers cover various important aspects of algorithmic game theory including market equilibrium, auctions and applications, two sided markets, cake-cutting, cooperative games, voting games, multi-agent scheduling, price of stability, various mechanism design problems: online-dynamics and multi-stages as well as revenue maximization and resource allocation and applications.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the most important and frequently considered optimization problems concerning cutting and packing. Based on appropriate modeling approaches for the problems considered, it offers an introduction to the related solution methods. It also addresses aspects like performance results for heuristic algorithms and bounds of the optimal value, as well as the packability of a given set of objects within a predefined container. The problems discussed arise in a wide variety of different fields of application and research, and as such, the fundamental knowledge presented in this book make it a valuable resource for students, practitioners, and researchers who are interested in dealing with such tasks.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the Clausthal-Goettingen International Workshop on Simulation Science, held in Goettingen, Germany, in April 2017. The 16 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on simulation and optimization in networks, simulation of materials, distributed simulations.

This book provides a concise introduction to convex duality in financial mathematics. Convex duality plays an essential role in dealing with financial problems and involves maximizing concave utility functions and minimizing convex risk measures. Recently, convex and generalized convex dualities have shown to be crucial in the process of the dynamic hedging of contingent claims. Common underlying principles and connections between different perspectives are developed; results are illustrated through graphs and explained heuristically. This book can be used as a reference and is aimed toward graduate students, researchers and practitioners in mathematics, finance, economics, and optimization. Topics include: Markowitz portfolio theory, growth portfolio theory, fundamental theorem of asset pricing emphasizing the duality between utility optimization and pricing by martingale measures, risk measures and its dual representation, hedging and super-hedging and its relationship with linear programming duality and the duality relationship in dynamic hedging of contingent claims

This is the first book combining research on the Global Environment, Catastrophic Risks and Economic Theory and Policy. Modern economic theory originated in the middle of the twentieth century when industrial expansion coupled with population growth led to a voracious use of natural resources and global environmental concerns. It is uncontested that, for the first time in recorded history, humans dominate the planet, changing the planet's atmosphere, its bodies of water, and the complex web of species that makes life on earth. This radical change in circumstances led to rethinking of the foundations of human organization and, in particular, the industrial economy and the economic theory behind it. This book brings together new approaches on multiple levels: environmental sustainability requires rethinking in terms of economic theory and policy as well as the considerations of catastrophic risk and extremal events. Leading experts address questions of economic governance, risk management, policy decision making and distribution across time and space.

Mathematical methods and theories with interdisciplinary applications are presented in this book. The eighteen contributions presented in this Work have been written by eminent scientists; a few papers are based on talks which took place at the International Conference at the Hellenic Artillery School in May 2015. Each paper evaluates possible solutions to long-standing problems such as the solvability of the direct electromagnetic scattering problem, geometric approaches to cyber security, ellipsoid targeting with overlap, non-equilibrium solutions of dynamic networks, measuring ballistic dispersion, elliptic regularity theory for the numerical solution of variational problems, approximation theory for polynomials on the real line and the unit circle, complementarity and variational inequalities in electronics, new two-slope parameterized achievement scalarizing functions for nonlinear multiobjective optimization, and strong and weak convexity of closed sets in a Hilbert space. Graduate students, scientists, engineers and researchers in pure and applied mathematical sciences, operations research, engineering, and cyber security will find the interdisciplinary scientific perspectives useful to their overall understanding and further research.

This state-of-the art collection of papers analyses various aspects of the theory of externalities and public goods. The contributions employ new analytical techniques like the aggregative game approach, and discuss the philosophical underpinnings of the theory. Furthermore, they highlight a range of topical empirical applications including climate policy and counterterrorism. This contributed volume was written in memory of Richard C. Cornes, a pioneer in the theory of externalities and public goods.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to cooperative game theory and a practice-oriented reference guide to new models and tools for studying bilateral fuzzy relations among several agents or players. It introduces the reader to several fuzzy models, each of which is first analyzed in the context of classical games (crisp games) and subsequently in the context of fuzzy games. Special emphasis is given to the value of Shapley, which is presented for the first time in the context of fuzzy games. Students and researchers will find here a self-contained reference guide to cooperative fuzzy games, characterized by a wealth of examples, descriptions of a wide range of possible situations, step-by-step explanations of the basic mathematical concepts involved, and easy-to-follow information on axioms and properties.

This book takes the reader on a journey, navigating the enigmatic aspects of cooperation; a journey that starts inside the body and continues via our thoughts to the human super-organism. Cooperation is one of life's fundamental principles. We are all made of parts - genes, cells, organs, neurons, but also of ideas, or 'memes'. Our societies too are made of parts - us humans. Is all this cooperation fundamentally the same process? From the smallest component parts of our bodies and minds to our complicated societies, everywhere cooperation is the organizing principle. Often this cooperation has emerged because the constituting parts have benefited from the interactions, but not seldom the cooperating units appear to lose on the interaction. How then to explain cooperation? How can we understand our intricate societies where we regularly provide small and large favors for people we are unrelated to, know, or even never expect to meet again? Where does the idea come from that it is right to risk one's life for country, religion or freedom? The answers seem to reside in the two processes that have shaped humanity: biological and cultural evolution.

This book gathers the main recent results on positive trigonometric polynomials within a unitary framework. The book has two parts: theory and applications. The theory of sum-of-squares trigonometric polynomials is presented unitarily based on the concept of Gram matrix (extended to Gram pair or Gram set). The applications part is organized as a collection of related problems that use systematically the theoretical results.

This book employs game theory to warfare and in particular to military operations. It aims at scrutinizing the validity of the two ideas that have governed the literature on war and warfighting: One is the Clausewitzian Fog of War, which suggests that he who is able to "see" through the gunsmoke and observe his opponent's moves before he has to commit to some strategy himself, should be able to gain an advantage over that enemy; the other is the tradition of understanding military conflict as a zero-sum game. Combined, these ideas seem to imply that war always gives rise to a second-mover advantage. This book questions the validity of this presumption at the operational level of military planning. It provides a simple but rigorous game-theoretic framework in order to analyse operational alternatives for a whole range of typical conflicts Western military forces are facing, including the most recent ones such as Anti-Access/Area-Denial and supporting host nations' counterinsurgency campaigns.

Using the O.D.D. (Overview, Design concepts, Detail) protocol, this title explores the role of agent-based modeling in predicting the feasibility of various approaches to sustainability. The chapters incorporated in this volume consist of real case studies to illustrate the utility of agent-based modeling and complexity theory in discovering a path to more efficient and sustainable lifestyles. The topics covered within include: households' attitudes toward recycling, designing decision trees for representing sustainable behaviors, negotiation-based parking allocation, auction-based traffic signal control, and others. This selection of papers will be of interest to social scientists who wish to learn more about agent-based modeling as well as experts in the field of agent-based modeling.