Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Model Based Systems Engineering For System Of Systems Using Agent-Based Modeling, Paulette Acheson, Cihan H. Dagli, Nil Kilicay-Ergin

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) follows a model centric approach in contrast to the traditional document centric approach. The complexity of SoS development lends itself nicely to a model centric approach, especially a model that can represent the independence of the systems that comprise the SoS. An agent-based model provides a framework where the SoS and each system are independent entities with individual dynamics and interactions. The System of Systems (SoS) development depends on contributions from the individual systems each having their own agenda and priorities. System-to-system interactions are often necessary to accomplish the overall objectives and capabilities of the …

Risk Analysis: Comparative Study Of Various Techniques, Hanan Mohammad Altabbakh

Doctoral Dissertations

"Researchers in the safety field are facing more challenges everyday with the expanding modern socio-technical systems. Safety analysis such as hazard analysis, accident causation analysis, and risk assessment are being revisited to overcome the shortcoming of the conventional safety analysis. With increasingly complex human system interaction in today's modern systems, new safety challenges are being faced that needed to be assessed and addressed. Managers and engineers face the challenge to choose from the vast amount of techniques available and utilize the correct one. Indeed, new or improved risk assessment tools that can address these complexities are needed. One of the …

The Role Of Face-To-Face Interactions In The Success Of Virtual Project Teams, Lawrence Raymond Blenke

Doctoral Dissertations

"This dissertation examines the importance of in-person Face-To-Face (FTF) interactions in virtual engineering development projects. The basis for this investigation will be the hypothesis that FTF interactions increase the effectiveness, quality of communication, and the trust between participants beyond that achieved with purely computer mediated communication. Through a combination of a literature review and empirical research, this dissertation addresses the following questions: * How important is FTF interaction in virtual development work? * Do various functional areas and age groups rate the importance of FTF interactions differently? * How does FTF interaction affect the levels of trust and communication within …

Two Essays On Dynamic Programming And Reinforcement Learning, Shuva Ghosh

Doctoral Dissertations

"The semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) is a variant of the Markov decision process (MOP). This dissertation work focuses on the application of SMDPs to disaster response management and to maintenance management. Average and discounted reward are two popular performance metrics for MDPs/SMDPs. While both dynamic programming (DP) methods, i.e., value iteration and policy iteration, are commonly used to solve MDPs/SMDPs, value iteration is easier to apply than policy iteration. The existing value iteration algorithms for average reward SMDPs have some noteworthy limitations, which are sought to be overcome in this work. Reinforcement learning (RL) techniques, which are also studied in …

Real Options Modeling And Valuation Of Price Adjustment Flexibility With An Application To The Leasing Industry, Ahmed A. A. Al Sharif

Doctoral Dissertations

"Uncertainty poses not only threats but also opportunities. This study sought to build the scientific foundation for introducing a real options (ROs) methodology for price risk management to the leasing industry. A price risk management that allows for both coping with threats and taking advantage of opportunities. In the leasing industry, fixed rate long-term lease contracts help contract parties stabilize cash flows within volatile markets. The contract's term, however, may be extended long enough that prevent capturing the opportunities of gaining greater profits or reducing expenses. Therefore, the flexibility that enables participants to take advantage of favorable market price is …

A Comparison Of American And Asian Automakers' Vehicles In Quality, Reliability, And Safety, Ozge Senoz

Doctoral Dissertations

"Consumer Reports (CR) and J.D. Power and Associates (JDP) are two widely-known agencies that gather data on automobile quality and prepare reports on the data gathered that are related to various aspects of automobiles for different models for each manufacturer. This research has two overarching goals: The first is to determine if there are any clear differences in reliability, between the Japanese and U.S. auto-makers. The second is to determine if there is consistency between JDP and CR in the reliability ratings of vehicles. In order to attain these goals, this dissertation starts with the evaluation of these two major …

Development Of An Integrative Commissioning Methodology For New-Building Construction, William L. Gillis Iii

Doctoral Dissertations

"Commissioning (Cx) is a quality process for building construction used to verify that the owner's project requirements (OPR) are being met by the final design, construction, and operations and maintenance. The goal is to confirm that each phase of the project is linked back to the OPR through quality assurance methods. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification is an OPR which contributes to difficulties within the design and construction (D&C) process. Though LEED certification is only part of the OPR, too often the design drifts from the OPR and simply focuses on meeting the LEED certification.

Quality function …

An Automated Forward Operating Base Electrical Distribution System Simulator, Onur Kahveci, Mariesa L. Crow, Steven Corns

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, an automated forward operating base electrical distribution system simulator (ODCC) is developed. the ODCC has been developed based on the open platform distribution system simulator (DSS) that is able to create variable models of electrical systems and performing many types of analysis. © 2012 IEEE.

Modeling System Of Systems Acquisition, Nil Kilicay-Ergin, Paulette Acheson, John Colombi, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

System of systems (SoS) acquisition is a dynamic process of integrating independent systems. This paper describes modeling of the SoS acquisition environment based on the Wave Process Model. Agent-Based modeling methodology is utilized to abstract behavioral aspects of the acquisition process. © 2012 IEEE.

Fast Variable Selection For Memetracker Phrases Time Series Prediction, Yoan Miche, Tatiana Chistiakova, Anton Akusok, Amaury Lendasse, Rui Nian, Alberto Guilléhn

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This Paper Proposes a Methodology using a Fast Variable Selection as a Modified Version of the Forward-Backward Algorithm. This Methodology is Adapted to the Specificities of the Data Used: Very Small Number of Samples and High Number of Variables. Such Data is Generated using Underlying Dependencies and Seasonality Assumptions, from Meme Phrases Volume Data. by the Use of a Resampling Technique Along with the Proposed Variable Selection Scheme, Significant Results Are Obtained, and the Test Normalized Mean Square Error Performances Are Improved. the Results Indicate that with the Assumptions Made on the Data Structure, Variable Selection is Desirable. Also, the …

Analysis And Applications Of Replenishment Problems Under Stepwise Transportation Costs And Generalized Wholesale Prices, Dinçer Konur, Ayşegül Toptal

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this study, we analyze the replenishment decision of a buyer with the objective of maximizing total expected profits. the buyer faces stepwise freight costs in inbound transportation and a hybrid wholesale price schedule given by a combination of all-units discounts with economies and diseconomies of scale. This general cost structure enables the model and the proposed solution to be also used for the supplier selection of a buyer under the single sourcing assumption. We show that the buyers replenishment problem reduces to finding and comparing the solutions of the following two subproblems: (i) a replenishment problem involving wholesale prices …

An Exponential Moving Average Algorithm, David Haynes, Steven Corns, Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Techniques to reduce the search space when an optimizer seeks an optimal value are studied in this paper. a new mutation technique called the "Exponential Moving Average" algorithm (EMA) is introduced. the performance of EMA algorithms is compared to two other similar Computational Intelligence (CI) algorithms (an ordinary Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) and a "Mean-Variance Optimization" (MVO)) to solve a multi-dimensional problem which has a large search space. the classic Sudoku puzzle is chosen as the problem with a large search space. © 2012 IEEE.

A Comparison Of Representations For The Prediction Of Ground-Level Ozone Concentration, Benjamin Daniels, Steven Corns, Elizabeth Cudney

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This work presents a comparison of methods to predict ground-level ozone to highlight differences in the ability of the algorithms and to compare their performance to an established signal to noise-based prediction method. Existing data related to weather conditions and ground-level ozone was divided into a training set and a test set. Three algorithms were trained using the training set to create predictors, which were then analyzed with the test set, and then compared to the Taguchi Method to determine performance. It was found that the newly introduced R-LCS performed well on this problem, predictors using the Taguchi method had …

Introduction Of R-Lcs And Comparative Analysis With Fsc And Mahalanobis-Taguchi Method For Breast Cancer Classification, Benjamin Daniels, Steven M. Corns, Elizabeth A. Cudney

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Classification for medical diagnosis is an important problem in the field of pattern recognition. We introduce a new method for classification based on repeated analysis of information tailored to small data sets - the Rote Learning Classifier System. using the Wisconsin Breast Cancer study, this method was compared to three other methods of classification: Mahalanobis-Taguchi Systems, Finite State Classifiers, and Neural Networks. It was found that for the given data set, the Rote Learning Classifier System outperformed the other methods of classification. This new algorithm correctly classified over 92% of the data set. © 2012 IEEE.

The Multi-Product Price-Setting Newsvendor With Resource Capacity Constraints, Chase C. Murray, Abhijit Gosavi, Debabrata Talukdar

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, we consider a newsvendor problem commonly encountered in retail stores that cater to budget-sensitive shoppers. the newsvendor sells multiple products, and in addition to determining order quantities must also determine the selling price of each product sold. the demand for each product is of a stochastic nature and depends on the demands of other products, i.e., is cross-elastic. We transform the objective function into a form that is amenable to developing integer-programming solutions and then develop a numeric optimization procedure rooted in the Nelder-Mead search technique. We obtain encouraging numerical results on some small-scale and large-scale problems. …

Two-Semester Agile Systems Engineering Design Course: Investigation And Exploration Of "Immersive" Training Technologies, Andrew S. Bodenhamer, Ivan G. Guardiola, Steven Corns, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The teaching of systems engineering is a daunting task that involves the development of curriculum capable of teaching students the systems engineering process, the design aspects of engineering, and the interdisciplinary knowledge of a variety of fields. Design is widely considered to be the central or the major distinguishing activity of engineering1. Design can be considered as the center of system engineering, in which engineers employ an interdisciplinary approach to design effective solutions to meet social needs. However, systems engineering requires that traditional academic boundaries be crossed and intertwined with other fields of engineering as well as business, socio-political, and …

Fast By Nature-How Stress Patterns Define Human Experience And Performance In Dexterous Tasks, I. Pavlidis, P. Tsiamyrtzis, D. Shastri, A. Wesley, Y. Zhou, P. Lindner, P. Buddharaju, R. Joseph, A. Mandapati, B. Dunkin, B. Bass

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the present study we quantify stress by measuring transient perspiratory responses on the perinasal area through thermal imaging. These responses prove to be sympathetically driven and hence, a likely indicator of stress processes in the brain. Armed with the unobtrusive measurement methodology we developed, we were able to monitor stress responses in the context of surgical training, the quintessence of human dexterity. We show that in dexterous tasking under critical conditions, novices attempt to perform a task's step equally fast with experienced individuals. We further show that while fast behavior in experienced individuals is afforded by skill, fast behavior …

System For Detection Of Malicious Wireless Device Patterns, Shikhar P. Acharya, R. Arora, Ivan G. Guardiola

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The research within presents the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMM) for the detection of wireless devices in highly noisy environments using their unintended electromagnetic emissions (UEE). All electromagnetic devices emit such radiation that is unique to the electronics, housing, and other device attributes. This pattern recognition system can provide continuous detection analysis and can provide ideal information regarding the distance to an unknown device. An experiment was performed where UEE of a device was detected by a spectrum analyzer. Experimental result shows that our model can accurately detect if there is a device nearby emitting UEE or not.

A Fuzzy Inference Model For Predicting Irregular Human Behaviour During Stressful Missions, Sina Khanmohammadi, Cihan Hayreddin Dagli, Farnaz Zamani Esfahlani

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper a hybrid fuzzy inference and transfer function modeling is used to predict the irregular human behavior during hard and stressful tasks such as dangerous military missions. a set of affecting factors such as missioner's experience, fatigue, sunshine intensity, hungriness, thirstiness, psychological characteristics, affright, etc. may be taken to account. in this regard a dynamic system model is used to predict the convolution of the timed effects of different factors on irregular behavior of personnel during the mission. This approach of predicting irregular behavior or erroneous decision making of staff have serious usages in aerospace, military, social and …

Eustressed Or Distressed? Combining Physiology With Observation In User Studies, Avinash Wesley, Peggy Lindner, Ioannis Pavlidis

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this article the authors describe a novel way to conduct user studies via the combination of a physiological and an observational information channel. The method enables not only the quantification of arousing emotional states but also their disambiguation into positive or negative instances. The physiological channel targets sympathetic responses and has materialized as a perspiratory signal extracted from thermal imagery of the perinasal area. The observational channel has materialized via decoding of facial expressions. However, while such decoding is usually performed in the visible spectrum, the authors have developed an algorithm to carry this out in thermal imagery instead. …

Preface To Part Iii: Model Based Systems Engineering, Steven Corns

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

A Proposal To Use Real Time Pricing To Manage The Electrical Grid As A Step Toward Distributed Control, David Haynes, Steven Corns

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An alternative method of managing the electrical grid is presented. Rather than using a centralized control paradigm to balance generation against the load, a distributed approach is proposed. It is believed that this design improves the robustness of the grid by using an architecture that allows for the automatic formation of local micro grids. the self-organization of these micro-grids makes it possible to identify participants in an ad hoc fashion after a storm for purposes of disaster recovery. the micro-grid can automatically grow to encompass all participants and join with other grids to encompass the entire region. © 2012 Published …

Application Of Model-Based Systems Engineering On A University Satellite Design Team, Dustin Nottage, Steven Corns

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

System Engineering is a foundation of the Missouri S&T's Satellite Design Team, although it is not explicitly stated at all times. However, implementation of the systems engineering process within a student design team presents unique challenges. Student design teams have a high personnel turnover, a limited time commitment due to classes, some new members have little to no experience, and a sometimes lack of motivation to participate since it is volunteered time. the largest problem on the team is getting the new members knowledgeable about the system so they can start contributing as fast as possible. the other big problem …

Approximate Policy Iteration For Markov Control Revisited, Abhijit Gosavi

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Q-Learning is based on value iteration and remains the most popular choice for solving Markov Decision Problems (MDPs) via reinforcement learning (RL), where the goal is to bypass the transition probabilities of the MDP. Approximate policy iteration (API) is another RL technique, not as widely used as Q-Learning, based on modified policy iteration. in this paper, we present and analyze an API algorithm for discounted reward based on (i) classical temporal differences update for policy evaluation and (ii) simulation-Based mean estimation for policy improvement. Further, we analyze for convergence API algorithms based on Q-factors for (i) discounted reward and (ii) …

Computational System Architecture Development Using A Holistic Modeling Approach, Renzhong Wang, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents an innovative system architecture development framework that allows the search of optimum architecture solutions within large design space by automating certain model construction, alternative generation, simulation, and assessment tasks. Such framework is facilitated by a holistic modeling approach that combines the capabilities of Object Process Methodology (OPM), Colored Petri Net (CPN) and feature model. the resultant holistic model not only can capture the structural, behavior, and dynamic aspects of a system, allowing strong analysis methods to be applied, but also can specify the architectural design space allowing generation of architecture alternatives that cover it. the proposed framework …

Understanding System Of Systems Development Using An Agent-Based Wave Model, Paulette Acheson, Louis Pape, Cihan H. Dagli, Nil Kilicay-Ergin, John Columbi, Khaled Haris

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

System of Systems (SoS) development is a complex process that depends on the cooperation of various independent Systems [1]. SoS acquisition and development differs from that typical for a single System; it has been shown to follow a wave paradigm known as the Wave Model [2]. Agent based models (ABMs) consist of a set of abstracted entities referred to as agents, and a framework using simplified rules for simulating agent decisions and interactions. Agents have their own goals and are capable of perceiving changes in the environment. Systemic (global) behavior emerges from the decisions and interactions of the agents. This …

The Pricing Of Multiple Exercisable American-Style Real Options, Yu Meng

Doctoral Dissertations

"Real options embedded in a project provide management with the flexibility to alter initial investment decisions, thus making them a practical tool for project planning and budgeting. Additional values are contributed to the underlying project due to the flexibilities that are provided by real options. This dissertation presents two models for pricing multiple exercisable American real options, one that employs the binomial tree method and the other one that employs the finite difference method. Different examples of multiple exercisable real options are discussed to demonstrate the two pricing models. Interactions between options and reality constraints are also considered. These two …

Two Essays On The Domain Translation From Financial Options To Real Options, Hongyan Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

"Real options (ROs) extend the financial option pricing theory to the valuation of real asset investment and managerial flexibility under uncertainty. However, differences between financial and non-financial markets, and the complex real world environment of applications, build obstacles for the domain translation from financial options to ROs.

This dissertation is motivated by the challenges of domain translation and developed in two essays. The first essay studies the incentive function of ROs (named the RO incentive). The essay develops an option-game framework to model the RO incentive, examines the change of investment behavior caused by the RO incentive, and values the …

Enabling Systems And The Adaptability Of Complex Systems-Of-Systems, Charles O. Adler, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

For complex techno-social system-of-systems, the system's robustness and its ability to adapt to changing environments and circumstances over the life cycle of the systems is an important measure of system quality and effectiveness. the IEEE 15288-2004 standard describes the concept of "enabling systems" that provide non-operational services to the system-of-interest at various times in the system life cycle. This concept of enabling systems provides critical components and perspective in the architecting and analysis of systems-of-systems adaptability and capabilities over time. Enabling systems also provide a potential strong link between the technical system and larger environmental effects such as economic conditions. …

Fuzzy Assessor Using Type 1 And Type 2 Fuzzy Sets, Paulette Acheson, Cihan H. Dagli

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper provides a fuzzy assessor that can be used to evaluate system architectures. the fuzzy assessor includes a method of assigning system architecture attribute values to the lower-level subsystems using type 1 fuzzy sets and type 2 fuzzy sets. Each architecture attribute is evaluated at the lowest subsystem level and then mathematically rolled-up to provide the system level value for each architecture attribute. Then the value for each architecture attribute is combined into an overall system architecture performance value. This provides a mathematical method of qualitatively assessing a system architecture based on key architecture attributes. the fuzzy assessor uses …