This book is devoted to recent developments and applications of multiple criteria decision aid tools in the field of finance, insurance and investment. It illustrates recent methods and procedures designed to solve problems related to finance, insurance and portfolio selection formulated through a mathematical programming framework and for which a large number of conflicting and incommensurable…
This book presents Systems Engineering from a modern, multidisciplinary engineering approach, providing the understanding that all aspects of systems design, systems, software, test, security, maintenance and the full life-cycle must be factored in to any large-scale system design; up front, not factored in later. It lays out a step-by-step approach to systems-of-systems architectural design, d…
This textbook covers the theoretical background of one- and multidimensional signal processing, statistical analysis and modelling, coding and information theory with regard to the principles and design of image, video and audio compression systems. The theoretical concepts are augmented by practical examples of algorithms for multimedia signal coding technology, and related transmission aspect…
The book examines the emerging approach of using qualitative methods, such as interviews and field observations, in the philosophy of science. Qualitative methods are gaining popularity among philosophers of science as more and more scholars are resorting to empirical work in their study of scientific practices. At the same time, the results produced through empirical work are quite different f…
This textbook teaches advanced undergraduate and first-year graduate students in Engineering and Applied Sciences to gather and analyze empirical observations (data) in order to aid in making design decisions. While science is about discovery, the primary paradigm of engineering and "applied science" is design. Scientists are in the discovery business and want, in general, to understand the …
The field of natural computing has been the focus of a substantial research effort in recent decades. One particular strand of this research concerns the development of computational algorithms using metaphorical inspiration from systems and phenomena that occur in the natural world. These naturally inspired computing algorithms have proven to be successful problem-solvers across domains as div…
This book covers three fundamental problems at the interface of multi-project management and human resource management: the selection of projects, the composition of small project teams, and workload leveling. Matthias Walter proposes optimization models and solution methods for these problems, assuming multi-skilled workers with heterogeneous skill levels. For the first time, the author presen…
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 15th International Workshop on Multi-Agent-Based Simulation, MABS 2014, held in Paris, France, in May 2014. The workshop was held in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, AAMAS 2014. The 17 revised full papers included in this volume were carefully select…
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, EUMAS 2014, held in Prague, Czech Republic, in December 2014. The 21 full papers and 8 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 79 submissions. They are organized in topical sections named: agent-based models, trust and reputation; coordination, coalitions and tea…
This book provides essential background knowledge on the development of model-based real-world solutions in the field of control and decision making for water systems. It presents system engineering methods for modelling surface water and groundwater resources as well as water transportation systems (rivers, channels and pipelines). The models in turn provide information on both the water quant…