Business Commons^™

Direct Neighbor Search, Jilian Zhang, Kyriakos Mouratidis, Hwee Hwa Pang

Kyriakos MOURATIDIS

In this paper we study a novel query type, called direct neighbor query. Two objects in a dataset are direct neighbors (DNs) if a window selection may exclusively retrieve these two objects. Given a source object, a DN search computes all of its direct neighbors in the dataset. The DNs define a new type of affinity that differs from existing formulations (e.g., nearest neighbors, nearest surrounders, reverse nearest neighbors, etc.) and finds application in domains where user interests are expressed in the form of windows, i.e., multi-attribute range selections. Drawing on key properties of the DN relationship, we develop an …

Budgeted Personalized Incentive Approaches For Smoothing Congestion In Resource Networks, Pradeep Varakantham, Na Fu, William Yeoh, Shih-Fen Cheng, Hoong Chuin Lau

Shih-Fen CHENG

Congestion occurs when there is competition for resources by sel sh agents. In this paper, we are concerned with smoothing out congestion in a network of resources by using personalized well-timed in- centives that are subject to budget constraints. To that end, we provide: (i) a mathematical formulation that computes equilibrium for the re- source sharing congestion game with incentives and budget constraints; (ii) an integrated approach that scales to larger problems by exploiting the factored network structure and approximating the attained equilib- rium; (iii) an iterative best response algorithm for solving the uncon- strained version (no budget) of the …

A Multi-Objective Memetic Algorithm For Vehicle Resource Allocation In Sustainable Transportation Planning, Hoong Chuin Lau, Lucas Agussurja, Shih-Fen Cheng, Pang Jin Tan

Shih-Fen CHENG

Sustainable supply chain management has been an increasingly important topic of research in recent years. At the strategic level, there are computational models which study supply and distribution networks with environmental considerations. At the operational level, there are, for example, routing and scheduling models which are constrained by carbon emissions. Our paper explores work in tactical planning with regards to vehicle resource allocation from distribution centers to customer locations in a multi-echelon logistics network. We formulate the bi-objective optimization problem exactly and design a memetic algorithm to efficiently derive an approximate Pareto front. We illustrate the applicability of our approach …

An Agent-Based Simulation Approach To Experience Management In Theme Parks, Shih-Fen Cheng, Larry Junjie Lin, Jiali Du, Hoong Chuin Lau, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham

Shih-Fen CHENG

In this paper, we illustrate how massive agent-based simulation can be used to investigate an exciting new application domain of experience management in theme parks, which covers topics like congestion control, incentive design, and revenue management. Since all visitors are heterogeneous and self-interested, we argue that a high-quality agent-based simulation is necessary for studying various problems related to experience management. As in most agent-base simulations, a sound understanding of micro-level behaviors is essential to construct high-quality models. To achieve this, we designed and conducted a first-of-its-kind real-world experiment that helps us understand how typical visitors behave in a theme-park environment. …

Interacting Knapsack Problem In Designing Resource Bundles, Truong Huy D. Nguyen, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Hoong Chuin Lau, Shih-Fen Cheng

Shih-Fen CHENG

In many real-life businesses, the service provider/seller keeps a log of the visitors’ behavior as a way to assess the efficiency of the current business/operation model and find room for improvement. For example, by tracking when visitors entering attractions in a theme park, theme park owners can detect when and where congestion may occur, thus having contingency plans to reroute the visitors accordingly. Similarly, a Cable TV service provider can track channel switching events at each household to identify uninteresting channels. Subsequently, the repertoire of channels up for subscription can evolve over time to better serve the entertainment demand of …

Understanding The Influence Of Blog On The Development Of Social Capital, Reza Vaezi, Gholamreza Torkzadeh, Jerry Cha-Jan Chang

Reza Vaezi

The rapid use and application of blogs in diverse areas such as education, marketing, journalism, and human resource management in recent years underlines the need for a better understanding of the impact of this new technology on social capital. Social capital reflects the norm of reciprocity and the level of trust among individuals who connect, interact, and benefit from one another. Blog is expected to influence the extent and the scope of this interaction by providing new means of networking among people. This paper examines the relationship between blog use and social capital and reports on the results of an …

Principles Of Incident Response And Disaster Recovery, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

Are you ready to respond to an unauthorized intrusion to your computer network or server? Principles of Incident Response and Disaster Recovery presents methods to identify vulnerabilities and take appropriate countermeasures to prevent and mitigate failure risks for an organization. Not only does book present a foundation in disaster recovery principles and planning, but it also emphasizes the importance of incident response minimizing prolonged downtime that can potentially lead to irreparable loss. This book is the first of its kind to address the overall problem of contingency planning rather than focusing on specific tasks of incident response or disaster recovery.

Management Of Information Security, 1st Edition, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

Management of Information Security is designed for senior and graduate-level business and information systems students who want to learn the management aspects of information security. This text takes a "view from the top" and presents important information for future managers regarding information security. The material covered in this text is often part of a capstone course in an information security.

Management Of Information Security, 2nd Edition, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

Information security-driven topic coverage is the basis for this updated book that will benefit readers in the information technology and business fields alike. Management of Information Security, provides an overview of information security from a management perspective, as well as a thorough understanding of the administration of information security. Written by two Certified Information Systems Security Professionals (CISSP), this book has the added credibility of incorporating the CISSP Common Body of Knowledge (CBK), especially in the area of information security management. The second edition has been updated to maintain the industry currency and academic relevance that made the previous edition …

Guide To Firewalls And Network Security: Intrusion Detection And Vpns, 2nd Edition, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord, Richard Austin, Greg Holden

Herbert J. Mattord

Firewalls are among the best-known security tools in use today, and their critical role in information security continues to grow. However, firewalls are most effective when they are backed by effective security planning, a well-designed security policy, and when they work in concert with anti-virus software, intrusion detection systems, and other tools. This book aims to explore firewalls in the context of these other elements, providing readers with a solid, in-depth introduction to firewalls that focuses on both managerial and technical aspects of security. Coverage includes packet filtering, authentication, proxy servers, encryption, bastion hosts, virtual private networks (VPNs), log file …

Principles Of Information Security, 3rd Edition, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

Explore the field of information security and assurance with this valuable resource that focuses on both the managerial and technical aspects of the discipline. Principles of Information Security, Third Edition builds on internationally recognized standards and bodies of knowledge to provide the knowledge and skills that information systems students need for their future roles as business decision-makers. Coverage includes key knowledge areas of the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional), as well as risk management, cryptography, physical security, and more. The third edition has retained the real-world examples and scenarios that made previous editions so successful, but has updated the …

Management Of Information Security, 3rd Edition, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

Management of Information Security, Third Edition focuses on the managerial aspects of information security and assurance. Topics covered include access control models, information security governance, and information security program assessment and metrics. Coverage on the foundational and technical components of information security is included to reinforce key concepts. This new edition includes up-to-date information on changes in the field such as revised sections on national and international laws and international standards like the ISO 27000 series. With these updates, Management of Information Security continues to offer a unique overview of information security from a management perspective while maintaining a finger …

Principles Of Information Security, 2nd Edition, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

Principles of Information Security examines the field of information security to prepare information systems students for their future roles as business decision-makers. This textbook presents a balance of the managerial and the technical aspects of the discipline and addresses knowledge areas of the CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) certification throughout. The authors discuss information security within a real-world context, by including examples of issues faced by today's professionals and by including tools, such as an opening vignette and "Offline" boxes with interesting sidebar stories in each chapter. Principles of Information Security also offers extensive opportunities for hands-on work.

Roadmap To Information Security: For It And Infosec Managers, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

Roadmap to Information Security: For IT and Infosec Managers provides a solid overview of information security and its relationship to the information needs of an organization. Content is tailored to the unique needs of information systems professionals who find themselves brought in to the intricacies of information security responsibilities. The book is written for a wide variety of audiences looking to step up to emerging security challenges, ranging from students to experienced professionals. This book is designed to guide the information technology manager in dealing with the challenges associated with the security aspects of their role, providing concise guidance on …

Principles Of Information Security, 4th Edition, Michael Whitman, Herbert Mattord

Herbert J. Mattord

The fourth edition of Principles of Information Security explores the field of information security and assurance with updated content including new innovations in technology and methodologies. Students will revel in the comprehensive coverage that includes a historical overview of information security, discussions on risk management and security technology, current certification information, and more. The text builds on internationally-recognized standards and bodies of knowledge to provide the knowledge and skills students need for their future roles as business decision-makers. Information security in the modern organization is a management issue which technology alone cannot answer; it is a problem that has important …

Cloud Trader Simulator Overview

Stephen M. Watt

This video presentation complements the article "An Agent-Based Financial Market Simulator for Evaluation of Algorithmic Trading Strategies" by Rui Hu and Stephen Watt.

Testing And Integration Team Project Management, Tyler Leben, Jeremy Straub, Scott Kerlin

Jeremy Straub

The Testing and Integration Team plays an integral role in the development of the open source CubeSat known as Open Orbiter. Like any project, the Testing Team’s project can benefit from structure and management to effectively utilize it’s time and resources. CSCI 297 teaches the skills needed to turn a good idea into successful endeavor. By applying skills such as effective planning, setting milestones, dealing with changes and supervising to an actual project, Open Orbiter has transformed from a pipe dream to a real, obtainable goal. Doing this has turned learning about project management into more that just power points …

Project Management For The Openorbiter Operating Software Team, Kelton Karboviak, Dayln Limesand, Michael Hlas, Eric Berg, Christoffer Korvald, Jeremy Straub, Ronald Marsh, Scott Kerlin

Jeremy Straub

OpenOrbiter is producing a 1-U CubeSat spacecraft1 to facilitate the construction of low-cost2 spacecraft by others in the future. The Operating Software team is in charge of designing and creating the software that controls most of the CubeSat’s operations such as image capturing, storage management, and temperature sensing. The project management deliverables that we have worked on as a team are the Project Definition, Work Breakdown Structure, and the Project Schedule. The Project Definition defines exactly what our project team will be developing including, but not limited to, what the team is in charge of developing, what its not in …

Ground Station Software Team Project Management, Zach Maguire, Marshall Mattingly, Christoffer Korvald, Jeremy Straub, Scott Kerlin

Jeremy Straub

In CSCI 297 class we partake in learning the roles of software team leads and developers. With hands on activities that get us involved in what a real manager of a software team may do such as: defining a project, planning a project, developing a work breakdown structure, estimating the work, developing a project schedule, etc. This work is performed in the context of the OpenOrbiter project which seeks to build a low-cost spacecraft1 that can be produced with a parts budget of approxi-mately $5,0002 by schools worldwide. The ground station software team’s purpose within Open Orbiter project is to …

Latent Topic Analysis For Predicting Group Purchasing Behavior On The Social Web, Feng-Tso Sun, Martin Griss, Ole J. Mengshoel, Yi-Ting Yeh

Ole J Mengshoel

An Analysis Of Extreme Price Shocks And Illiquidity Among Systematic Trend Followers, Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Shih-Fen Cheng

We construct an agent-based model to study the interplay between extreme price shocks and illiquidity in the presence of systematic traders known as trend followers. The agent-based approach is particularly attractive in modeling commodity markets because the approach allows for the explicit modeling of production, capacities, and storage constraints. Our study begins by using the price stream from a market simulation involving human participants and studies the behavior of various trend-following strategies, assuming initially that their participation will not impact the market. We notice an incremental deterioration in strategy performance as and when strategies deviate further and further from the …

Decentralized Decision Support For An Agent Population In Dynamic And Uncertain Domains, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Shih-Fen Cheng, Thi Duong Nguyen

Shih-Fen CHENG

This research is motivated by problems in urban transportation and labor mobility, where the agent flow is dynamic, non-deterministic and on a large scale. In such domains, even though the individual agents do not have an identity of their own and do not explicitly impact other agents, they have implicit interactions with other agents. While there has been much research in handling such implicit effects, it has primarily assumed controlled movements of agents in static environments. We address the issue of decision support for individual agents having involuntary movements in dynamic environments . For instance, in a taxi fleet serving …

Lagrangian Relaxation For Large-Scale Multi-Agent Planning, Geoff Gordon, Pradeep Varakantham, William Yeoh, Hoong Chuin Lau, Shih-Fen Cheng

Shih-Fen Cheng

Multi-agent planning is a well-studied problem with various applications including disaster rescue, urban transportation and logistics, both for autonomous agents and for decision support to humans. Due to computational constraints, existing research typically focuses on one of two scenarios: unstructured domains with many agents where we are content with heuristic solutions, or domains with small numbers of agents or special structure where we can provide provably near-optimal solutions. By contrast, in this paper, we focus on providing provably near-optimal solutions for domains with large numbers of agents, by exploiting a common domain-general property: if individual agents each have limited influence …

Would Position Limits Have Made Any Difference To The 'Flash Crash' On May 6, 2010, Wing Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Shih-Fen CHENG

On May 6, 2010, the US equity markets experienced a brief but highly unusual drop in prices across a number of stocks and indices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell by approximately 9% in a matter of minutes, and several stocks were traded down sharply before recovering a short time later. Earlier research by Lee, Cheng and Koh (2010) identified the conditions under which a “flash crash” can be triggered by systematic traders running highly similar trading strategies, especially when they are “crowding out” other liquidity providers in the market. The authors contend that the events of May 6, …

Lagrangian Relaxation For Large-Scale Multi-Agent Planning, Geoff Gordon, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, William Yeoh, Ajay Srinivasan, Hoong Chuin Lau, Shih-Fen Cheng

Shih-Fen CHENG

Multi-agent planning is a well-studied problem with applications in various areas. Due to computational constraints, existing research typically focuses either on unstructured domains with many agents, where we are content with heuristic solutions, or domains with small numbers of agents or special structure, where we can find provably near-optimal solutions. In contrast, here we focus on provably near-optimal solutions in domains with many agents, by exploiting influence limits. To that end, we make two key contributions: (a) an algorithm, based on Lagrangian relaxation and randomized rounding, for solving multi-agent planning problems represented as large mixed-integer programs; (b) a proof of …

Notes On Equilibria In Symmetric Games, Shih-Fen Cheng, Daniel M. Reeves, Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, Michael P. Wellman

Shih-Fen CHENG

In a symmetric game, every player is identical with respect to the game rules. We show that a symmetric 2strategy game must have a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. We also discuss Nash’s original paper and its generalized notion of symmetry in games. As a special case of Nash’s theorem, any finite symmetric game has a symmetric Nash equilibrium. Furthermore, symmetric infinite games with compact, convex strategy spaces and continuous, quasiconcave utility functions have symmetric pure-strategy Nash equilibria. Finally, we discuss how to exploit symmetry for more efficient methods of finding Nash equilibria.

Distributing Complementary Resources Across Multiple Periods With Stochastic Demand, Shih-Fen Cheng, John Tajan, Hoong Chuin Lau

Shih-Fen CHENG

In this paper, we evaluate whether the robustness of a market mechanism that allocates complementary resources could be improved through the aggregation of time periods in which resources are consumed. In particular, we study a multi-round combinatorial auction that is built on a general equilibrium framework. We adopt the general equilibrium framework and the particular combinatorial auction design from the literature, and we investigate the benefits and the limitation of time-period aggregation when demand-side uncertainties are introduced. By using simulation experiments, we show that under stochastic conditions the performance variation of the process decreases as the time frame length (time …

Designing The Market Game For A Commodity Trading Simulation, Shih-Fen Cheng

Shih-Fen CHENG

In this paper, we propose to design a market game that (a) can be used in modeling and studying commodity trading scenarios, and (b) can be used in capturing human traders' behaviors. Specifically, we demonstrate the usefulness of this commodity trading game in a single-commodity futures trading scenario. A pilot experiment was run with a mixture of human traders and an autonomous agent that emulates the aggregatedmarket condition, with the assumption that this autonomous agent would hint each of its action through a public announcement. We show that the information collected from this simulation can be used to extract the …

Would Price Limits Have Made Any Difference To The 'Flash Crash' On May 6, 2010, Wing Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Shih-Fen CHENG

On May 6, 2010, the U.S. equity markets experienced a brief but highly unusual drop in prices across a number of stocks and indices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (see Figure 1) fell by approximately 9% in a matter of minutes, and several stocks were traded down sharply before recovering a short time later. The authors contend that the events of May 6, 2010 exhibit patterns consistent with the type of "flash crash" observed in their earlier study (2010). This paper describes the results of nine different simulations created by using a large-scale computer model to reconstruct the critical elements …

Decision Support For Assorted Populations In Uncertain And Congested Environments, Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Asrar Ahmed, Shih-Fen Cheng

Shih-Fen Cheng

This research is motivated by large scale problems in urban transportation and labor mobility where there is congestion for resources and uncertainty in movement. In such domains, even though the individual agents do not have an identity of their own and do not explicitly interact with other agents, they effect other agents. While there has been much research in handling such implicit effects, it has primarily assumed deterministic movements of agents. We address the issue of decision support for individual agents that are identical and have involuntary movements in dynamic environments. For instance, in a taxi fleet serving a city, …