Bücher der Reihe Automation, Collaboration, & E-Services

This book presents social welfare functions as a unified multidisciplinary framework for various resource allocation problems. By measuring the impact of local decisions on broader society, social welfare functions enable "e;socialized"e; decisions and thereby produce an emergent property that "e;global"e; balance and welfare emerge from "e;local"e; welfare-maximizing behaviors. Social welfare functions are originally used in economics to quantify income welfare, jointly considering average and inequality to arrive at better measures of welfare than average alone. Wishing the readers to find opportunities for their problems of interest, this book introduces research results of social welfare functions applied in five different engineering applications, defining welfare metrics pertaining to the characteristics of the application.  The "e;energy welfare"e; in wireless sensor network measures richness of distributed sensors in energy. The "e;preparedness welfare"e; in emergency medical services quantifies the preparedness level of an entire service area by aggregating preparedness levels of individual zones. The "e;preference welfare"e; in intelligent shared environments represents the opinions of real people for groups. The "e;resource welfare"e; in multi-robot task allocation quantifies the efficiency of utilizing distributed resources across robots. The "e;utility welfare"e; in complex cyber-physical systems quantifies the impact of local resource sharing decisions on the broader task communities.

This book is a groundbreaking exploration of the historical and contemporary challenges in systems collaboration and integration. This exceptional book delves into engineering design, planning, control, and management, offering invaluable insights into the evolving nature of systems and networks. In an era defined by the ongoing cyber and digital transformation, coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning, this book offers insights into the future of systems collaboration and integration. Over the past three decades, the PRISM Center and its affiliated PRISM Global Research Network (PGRN) have spearheaded pioneering theories, technologies, and applications in the realm of systems collaboration and integration. Their research, driven by the motto ¿Knowledge through information; Wisdom through collaboration,¿ has yielded remarkable advancements. Those achievements and papers presented and updated by the PGRN scholars in the 26th ICPR are included in this book.

Real-world supply chains and networks are inherently complex, formed by a large number of self-governing interconnected agents which dynamically update their behavior rules and connections based on context and environment changes.

Collaboration in highly distributed organizations of people, robots, and autonomous systems is and must be revolutionized by engineering augmentation. This book establishes the theoretical foundations and design principles of collaborative e-Work, e-Business and e-Service, their models and applications, design and implementation techniques.

In exploring modeling in technological practice, this book examines technological/engineering models from new viewpoints including the role of language; communities of practice; reification; machines both current and historic and epistemological aspects.

In exploring modeling in technological practice, this book examines technological/engineering models from new viewpoints including the role of language; communities of practice; reification; machines both current and historic and epistemological aspects.