Continuity properties of solution concepts for cooperative games

Summary A survey is given of known continuity properties of solution concepts for cooperative games. Further continuity properties are derived for the bargaining set, the kernel, the equal division core, the least core, the least tax core, the-value and also for the core of non sidepayment games.

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Zusammenfassung Die Arbeit gibt einen Überblick übebekannte Kontinuitätseigenschaften von Lösungsansätzen für kooperative Spiele. Weiter Kontinuitätseigenschaften werden abgeleitet für die Aushandlungsmenge, den Kernel, den Kern gleicher Aufteilungen, den kleinsten Kern, den kleinsten tax-Kern, den-Wert und den Kern von Spielen ohne Seitenzahlungen.

     

The impact of opening hours on the equity of individual space-time accessibility

While many studies have concentrated on the effects of the spatial distribution of services on individual accessibility, only little is known about the ways in which equity of individual accessibility is affected by the temporal organisation of service delivery. This paper seeks to deepen our understanding about the relationship between accessibility, equity and the opening hours of public service facilities on the basis of space-time accessibility measures. Three approaches based on different equity principles are presented to schedule the opening hours of public service facilities: a utilitarian, an egalitarian and a distributive approach. A case study of public libraries in Ghent (Belgium) demonstrates the relevance of these approaches for amending the opening hours of public services to control the equity of accessibility levels across individuals.     

Cooperation in capital deposits

The rate of return earned on a deposit can depend on its term, the amount of money invested in it, or both. Most banks, for example, offer a higher interest rate for longer term deposits. This implies that if one individual has capital available for investment now, but needs it in the next period, whereas the opposite holds for another individual, then they can both benefit from cooperation since it allows them to invest in a longer term deposit. A similar situation arises when the rate of return on a deposit depends on the amount of capital invested in it. Although the benefits of such cooperative behavior may seem obvious to all individuals, the actual participation of an individual depends on what part of the revenues he eventually receives. The allocation of the jointly earned benefits to the investors thus plays an important part in the stability of the cooperation. This paper provides a game theoretical analysis of this allocation problem. Several classes of corresponding deposit games are introduced. For each class, necessary conditions for a nonempty core are provided, and allocation rules that yield core-allocations are examined.     

On balanced games and games with committee control

Summary A generalization of flow games, namely, flow games with committee control is considered, to obtain a representation of non-negative balanced games. The committee control is modeled with the aid of simple games. Linear production games with committee control are also studied and results on the balancedness of such games are obtained.

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Zusammenfassung Eine Verallgemeinerung von Fluß-spielen, nämlich solchen mit Komitee-Kontrolle, wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit betrachtet, um eine Darstellung nicht-negativer ausgewogener Spiele zu erhalten. Die Komitee-Kontrolle wird mit Hilfe einfacher Spiele modelliert. Ebenso werden lineare Produktionsspiele mit Komitee-Kontrolle untersucht, und Ergebnisse zur Ausgewogenheit solcher Spiele werden hergeleitet.

     

Introducing functional classification theory to land use planning by means of decision tables

This paper contributes to the conceptualisation and analysis of double-sided matching problems, taking the land use planning problem as an example. It does so by introducing functional classification theory at the knowledge level, the symbol level and the system level of a DSS. This theory explicitly expresses the methodological viewpoint of relational realism. At the knowledge level this implies defining knowledge on the basis of matching the intension and extension of concepts. At the symbol level it deals with knowledge representation and here decision tables are advanced and formally introduced. At the system level the formalism used at the symbol level is implemented to develop a relational matching DSS.     

The role of European forests in the global carbon cycle-A review

The first part of this paper presents an overview of national forest carbon balance studies that have been carried out in Europe. Based on these national assessments, an estimate is made of the present role of European forests in the global carbon cycle. Differences in the methodologies applied are discussed. At present, 15 European countries have assessed a national forest and/or forest sector carbon balance. Together, these studies cover 104 million ha and present the average situation in the mid-1980s. Most of the studies have used a static methodology to convert forest inventory data into carbon. Extrapolating those studies to the total forest area of Europe (149 million ha) (excluding the FSU), yields a whole tree carbon sink of 101.3 Tg C y⁻¹ (9.5% of the European emissions) and a whole tree carbon stock of 7929 Tg C. Although in general the applied methodologies are comparable, they differ considerably in the way net fluxes are assessed and in the applied conversion coefficients. The role of forest fires in the European forest C balance might be larger than generally expected. A disadvantage of the static methodologies used is that they often regard only the forest ecosystem part of the carbon cycle which may result in misleading results concerning the role of the total forest sector; another disadvantage is that results are only valid for the year(s) on which the data are based. The second part of the paper discusses a methodology that could be applied to all national forests and forest sectors yielding more consistent results. The possibilities of using a large-scale forestry scenario model for a study on the present and future European forest sector carbon balance are presented.     

Environmental comparison of biobased chemicals from glutamic acid with their petrochemical equivalents

Glutamic acid is an important constituent of waste streams from biofuels production. It is an interesting starting material for the synthesis of biobased chemicals, thereby decreasing the dependency on fossil fuels. The objective of this paper was to compare the environmental impact of four biobased chemicals from glutamic acid with their petrochemical equivalents, that is, N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP), N-vinylpyrrolidone (NVP), acrylonitrile (ACN), and succinonitrile (SCN). A consequential life cycle assessment was performed, wherein glutamic acid was obtained from sugar beet vinasse. The removed glutamic acid was substituted with cane molasses and ureum. The comparison between the four biobased and petrochemical products showed that for NMP and NVP the biobased version had less impact on the environment, while for ACN and SCN the petrochemical version had less impact on the environment. For the latter two an optimized scenario was computed, which showed that the process for SCN can be improved to a level at which it can compete with the petrochemical process. For biobased ACN large improvements are required to make it competitive with its petrochemical equivalent. The results of this LCA and the research preceding it also show that glutamic acid can be a building block for a variety of molecules that are currently produced from petrochemical resources. Currently, most methods to produce biobased products are biotechnological processes based on sugar, but this paper demonstrates that the use of amino acids from low-value byproducts can certainly be a method as well.     

DisCoveR: accurate and efficient discovery of declarative process models

International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer - Declarative process modeling formalisms—which capture high-level process constraints—have seen growing interest,...     

MamMoeT: An intelligent agent-based communication support platform for multimodal transport

In this paper, an intelligent agent-based communication support platform for multimodal transport is developed. The rationale for doing so is found in the potential of such a system to increase cost efficiency, service and safety for different transport-related actors. Although, at present several comparable systems exist, their current implementation is far from successful because of technological and economic obstacles. The new expert communication platform put forward here (called MamMoeT) addresses these two issues by using a software agent-based approach. Software agents are pieces of software representing a single user. They are autonomous, communicative and intelligent. The MamMoeT system developed can be described as a real-time decision support system in which intelligent software agents handle communicative tasks, exchange desired amounts of information among different users using common exchange protocols which act as translators between different systems.     

Permutation games: Another class of totally balanced games

Summary A class of cooperative games in characteristic function form arising from certain sequencing problems and assignment problems, is introduced. It is shown that games of this class are totally balanced. In the proof of this fact we use the Birkhoff-von Neumann theorem on doubly stochastic matrices and the Bondareva-Shapley theorem on balanced games. It turns out that this class of permutation games coincides with the class of totally balanced games if the number of players is smaller than four. For larger games the class of permutation games is a nonconvex subset of the convex cone of totally balanced games.

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Zusammenfassung Wir führen eine Klasse von kooperativen Spielen in charakteristischer Funktionsform ein, die bei gewissen Folgeproblemen und Zuordnungsproblemen auftreten. Wir zeigen, daß diese Spiele vollständig balanciert sind. Zum Beweis verwenden wir den Satz von Birkhoff-von Neumann über doppelt stochastische Matrizen und den Satz von Bondareva-Shaplex über balancierte Spiele. Es zeigt sich, daß diese Klasse von Permutationsspielen mit der Klasse von vollständig balancierten Spiele übereinstimmt, falls die Zahl der Spieler kleiner als vier ist. Für größere Spiele ist die Klasse der Permutationsspiele eine nichtkonvexe Teilmenge des konvexen Kegels der vollständig balancierten Spiele.