Showing papers by "International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis published in 1982"

A Dual-Based Procedure for Dynamic Facility Location

Abstract: In dynamic facility location problems, one desires to select the time-staged establishment of facilities at different locations so as to minimize the total discounted costs for meeting demands specified over time at various customer locations. We formulate a particular dynamic facility location problem as a combinatorial optimization problem. The formulation permits both the opening of new facilities and the closing of existing ones. A branch-and-bound procedure incorporating a dual ascent method is presented and shown, in computational tests, to be superior to previously developed methods. The procedure is comparable to the most efficient methods for solving static single-period location problems. Problems with 25 potential facility locations, 50 customer locations, and 10 time periods have been solved within one second of CPU time on an IBM 3033 computer. Extensions of the dynamic facility location problem that allow price-sensitive demands, linearized concave costs, interdependent projects, multiple stages, and multiple commodities also can be solved by the dual ascent method. The method can serve as a component of a solution process for capacitated dynamic location problems.

Immigration and the stable population model.

Abstract: This paper reports on work aimed at extending stable population theory to include immigration. Its central finding is that, as long as fertility is below replacement, a constant number and age distribution of immigrants (with fixed fertility and mortality schedules) lead to a stationary population. Neither the level of the net reproduction rate nor the size of the annual immigration affects this conclusion; a stationary population eventually emerges. How this stationary population is created is studied, as is the generational distribution of the constant annual stream of births and of the total population. It is also shown that immigrants and their early descendants may have fertility well above replacement (as long as later generations adopt and maintain fertility below replacement), and the outcome will still be a long-run stationary population.

Equity, Efficiency, and Accessibility in Urban and Regional Health Care Systems

Abstract: This paper explores four different criteria of health-care resource allocation at the urban and regional level. The criteria are linked by a common spatial-interaction model. This model is based on the hypothesis that the number of hospital patients generated in a residential zone i is proportional to the relative morbidity of i, and to the availability of resources in treatment zone j, but is in inverse proportion to the accessibility costs of getting from i to j. The resource-allocation criteria are based on objectives on which there is broad agreement among planners and other actors in a health-care system. These objectives are concerned with allocations that conform to notions of equity, efficiency, and two definitions of accessibility. The allocation criteria give mainly aggregate-level information, and are designed with the long-term regional planning of health-care services in mind. The paper starts by defining the criteria, and describes how they are intended to be employed in a planning context. ...

A Proposal to Create a Cultural Theory of Risk

Abstract: Perhaps the greatest achievement of anthropology has been to show that different people, faced with the same situation, do different things. No sooner does an economist, a psychologist, a sociologist, or a political scientist produce his universally valid model of some aspect of human behavior than an anthropologist will jump up and say, “Ah, but what about the Bongo-bongo?” It is probably safe to say that there is no universalisitic proposition that is immune to Bongo-bongoism. Some semiologists, for instance, have suggested that there are some signs so rooted in nature that their meaning has to be intrinsic. One such sign is the arrow: → . Here, surely, the meaning is intrinsic to the sign; arrows always fly through the air point first and so the point of the sign, surely, must always indicate the direction of travel. Quite so, but who said the sign was an arrow? On a remote island in Micronesia the people spend much of their time hunting a secretive bird whose feet are specially adapted to the marshy terrain. Each time it puts one of its threestoed feet down on the ground, it leaves a sign: → : and every time a hunter sees one of these signs, he knows with certainty which way to go to catch up with his quarry. He goes in the direction indicated by the big central toe.

A Descriptive Model of Choice for Siting Facilities

Abstract: The siting of facilities for large-scale, novel technologies presents a formidable challenge to politcal risk management. This paper develops a model for describing the decision process for this type of problem at the level of societal systems. It explicitly considers the role of the relevant interested parties, each of whom brings to the siting debate its own set of objetives and attributes. We have labeled the approach a multiattribute multiparty model (MAMP to distinguish it from prescriptive techniques such as multiattribute utility analysis or decision analysis). The MAMP model is a natural extension of the burgeoning literature on the key role that limited time, attention, and information processing capabilities play in political decision making when there are uncertain outcomes and likely conflicts among interested parties. The model also highlights the importance of decentralized and sequential decision making and indicates the role that formal risk assessments have played at each stage of the process. We illustrate its application in the context of the decision proess associated with a proposed liquiefied natural gas terminal in California. The concluding portion of this paper suggests future rsearch needs for improving the credibility of analysis and facilitating collective action with respect to facility siting problems.

The IIASA Set of Energy Models: Its Design and Application

Abstract: The set of energy models used in the Energy Systems Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is described. This set of models – designed for studying the long-term, dynamic, and regional/global aspects of large-scale energy systems – serves as a means of synthesis for the energy studies at IIASA, in developing energy strategies and in evaluating their economic and environmental impacts. The critical question considered in the modeling is whether economies can afford the requisite expenditures of time and capital to achieve alternative energy strategies during the long-term transition to sustainable energy systems. The several individual models and their interrelationships were developed with these considerations in mind.

Management Simulation Games for Education and Research: A Comparative Study of Gaming in the Socialist Countries

Abstract: In this working paper gaming is considered as a tool for applied systems analysis and special emphasis is given to the following areas: (*) reasons for the management simulation game development; (*) taxonomy and definitions; (*) methodological problems in the design and implementation of management games; (*) design of the simulation system of models in the game; (*) multilevel management simulation games; (*) applications and transfers of management games. The goal of the paper is to disseminate gaming methods and results that have been obtained in the socialist countries when this approach was used for educational purposes, for teaching students and managers, and for research and operational purposes to test ideas and resolve situations in the decision making process. Finally , we hope that fulfillment of this goal will contribute to bringing together the scientists working in this area by using IIASA's unique position in the east-west scientific relationship.

Note on the equivalence of Kuhn-Tucker complementarity conditions to an equation

Abstract: This note presents a more general and simple proof with geometric interpretations of the equivalence of the complementarity problem to an equation (or a system of equations), given by Mangasarian in 1976. Although this fact has been used by the author and others in a different context, it is believed that it should be presented to a more general audience of optimization specialists.

Energy consumption and conservation

Abstract: This chapter discusses the future and present of energy consumption, the potential improvements in the efficiencies of energy use, and about the relationship of energy demand and detailed economic activities. MEDEE-2 model offers a means of collecting and processing large numbers of assumptions and calculating resultant energy use. MEDEE-2 results are presented in the chapter for Regions I through VI. The approach adopted for making energy demand projections using the MEDEE-2 model is a relatively detailed one. Once these detailed projections are made, they can be aggregated into demand categories, such as transportation, household, agriculture, and industry. These broad categories, as well as the total, can then be analyzed and interpreted in terms of various elasticities including energy price elasticities. Any unreasonable result in terms of elasticities is then a signal for re-examining the related combination of detailed assumptions and projections in the MEDEE-2 framework.

Evaluating Technological Risk: Prescriptive and Descriptive Perspectives

Abstract: Decisions concerning the deployment and management of novel or hazardous technologies raise several issues involving the evaluation of their impacts on society. Examples of such decisions include the siting of a liquefied natural gas facility, the regulation of nuclear energy production, and the screening and regulation of toxic chemicals. Each of these kinds of decisions results in uncertain benefits and costs to society. It would seem reasonable, then, that such decisions could be aided by any of several analytic techniques, including cost-benefit analysis, or perhaps decision analysis, which could include in the evaluation attitudes toward uncertainty and value trade-offs between conflicting objectives. However, there are often special aspects involved in such decisions that can make standard technical or economic analyses not very useful for aiding political decision making processes. These aspects include outcomes of the decision having very serious negative consequences with very low probability, inequitable distribution of burden, large scale, novelty, and others to be discussed below. Decisions involving such aspects sometimes come to be known as problems in managing social risk. Even though the word risk is currently in wide use in the media, it is often defined or applied in different ways by different parties for the decision at hand. In spite of this serious problem, to be discussed at some length below, the need to appraise the risks presented by a new or hazardous technology has led to the development of several analytic techniques often referred to collectively as risk assessment.

‘Unorthodox’ videotex applications: teleplaying, telegambling, telesoftware and telecomputing

Abstract: Telephone-based videotex systems are slowly changing from systems that permit only information retrieval and limited message sending based on numeric, menu-type access methods to more sophisticated, multi-user, interactive, transactional systems. This is partly due to the concept of adding external computers to the videotex network and partly due to the emergence of more intelligent terminals. In this paper, four major application areas, which have been made possible by these developments but have not yet received the attention they merit, are discussed in some detail: teleplaying, telegambling, telesoftware, and telecomputing. The authors maintain, and try to demonstrate, that these four areas will significantly influence the market-penetration and social impact of videotex systems.

Migration and Urban Change

Abstract: This paper examines the population development of large urban regions. Several hypotheses about patterns of settlement change in highly urbanized countries are discussed using empirical material derived from IIASA's Comparative Migration and Settlement Study. These hypotheses refer to interrelations between population growth and urban size, the role of migration and natural increase as components of urban population change, overall spatial mobility, hierarchical migration, and the age distribution of migrants moving between, out of, and into large urban areas.

Some remarks on energy and resource consumption of new information technologies

Abstract: Current research into the application of information technologies is largely focused on technological and socio-psychological issues. The following paper offers some remarks on the consumption of energy and other resources by these technologies. It is concluded that while in principle, new methods of telecommunication and information technology require fewer materials and less energy than traditional ones, but carelessly designed systems and applications could cause tremendous increases in such use. The design of a new technological system together with human attitudes toward changing modes of communication will be primarily responsible for its consumption of energy and materials.

Modelling the US Federal Spending Process: Overview and Implications

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to show how inflation is endemic to the budgetary process of the United States Federal Government. To do this we relate models of government expenditure to models of the economy, thus joining in theory what have in practice always been together.

Urbanization and the Global Energy Problem

Abstract: The long-term global energy problem is outlined in this paper. The world has appropriate substitutes for the limited resources of oil and natural gas. This process, however, requires a careful adaptation of the present energy infrastructure. The concept of consumption and supply densities is used to explore alternative strategies for such an adaptation. In particular, the possible role of renewable energy sources for rural and urban areas is discussed. The paper elaborates on the dependence of modern urban systems on an extension of centralized supply systems.

Economic growth and urbanization: a study of Japan.

Abstract: This paper describes some results obtained from simulating a computable general equilibrium model calibrated with 1960 data for Japan. Of the two closures used, the Keynesian type, which assumes unutilized resources, performs better than the neoclassical closure, which assumes full employment of all factors of production. In other words, Japanese economic growth in the 1960s may be characterized by the decisions of investors who regarded the supply of quality labor as virtually unlimited. Spatial aspects of population shifts have a significant bearing on macro growth potentials if social capital demands are spatially differentiated.

Comparing Risk Assessments for Liquefied Energy Gas Terminals - Some Results

Abstract: One of the most challenging problems in decisions concerning the deployment of novel, large-scale technologies is the assessment of the risk to the surrounding population In particular cases, such as nuclear reactors or liquefied energy gas (LEG) facilities, the political process involved may tend to focus on one particular form of that risk, ie, the risk to life from catastrophic accidents This paper examines several different assessments of that type of risk with two main goals in mind: (i) To present and compare the various procedures of risk assessment as applied to liquefied energy gas (LEG) terminal siting, and in doing so to clarify the limits of knowledge and understanding of LEG risks (ii) To quantify and compare the risks at four LEG terminal sites: Eemshaven (Netherlands), Mossmorran (UK), Point Conception (USA), and Wilhelmshaven (West Germany)