Article
A game-theoretic approach to optimizing the scale of incorporating renewable sources of energy and electricity storing systems in a regional electrical grid
The problem of developing a decision support system for estimating a) the scale of incorporating available renewable sources of energy (such as solar and wind energy) in a part of a country’s electrical grid (called a regional electrical grid further in this paper), and b) the scale of storing electricity in this (regional) electrical grid to make these renewable sources of electric power competitive with traditional power generators (such as fossil-fuel and nuclear ones) and to reduce the cost of acquiring electricity from all the electric power generating facilities in the grid is considered. In the framework of this system, renewable sources of energy are viewed as electricity generating facilities under both existing and expected electricity prices, and the uncertainty of energy supply from them and the uncertainty of the grid customer demand for electricity during every 24 h are taken into account. A mathematical model underlying the system allows one to study the interaction of all the grid elements as a game with a finite (more than three) number of players on a polyhedron of connected player strategies (i.e., strategies that cannot be chosen by the players independently of each other) in a finite-dimensional space. It is shown that solving both parts of the problem under consideration is reducible to finding Nash equilibrium points in this game.
A part of a country’s electrical grid in which an electricity generator (which may consist of several base load power plants and several peaking power plants) supplies electricity to a set of large customers of the grid, whereas the customers can a) receive electricity from renewable sources of energy, b) store electricity in certain volumes, and c) buy electricity in the markets is considered. It is proposed to describe the interaction of the generator, the large grid customers, and the transmission company (under uncertainty of the customer demand for electricity) by a game with a finite (more than three) number of players on polyhedra of player strategies some of which are connected and thus cannot be chosen by the players independently of each other. Sucient conditions for the game equilibria verifiable by solving three linear programming problems are proposed, and the equilibria particularly determine optimal production and selling strategies for the generator.
In this paper the basic properties of different types of equilibrium concepts in antagonistic games with various preference structures are considered.
This is the first book on the U.S. presidential election system to analyze the basic principles underlying the design of the existing system and those at the heart of competing proposals for improving the system. The book discusses how the use of some election rules embedded in the U.S. Constitution and in the Presidential Succession Act may cause skewed or weird election outcomes and election stalemates. The book argues that the act may not cover some rare though possible situations which the Twentieth Amendment authorizes Congress to address. Also, the book questions the constitutionality of the National Popular Vote Plan to introduce a direct popular presidential election de facto, without amending the Constitution, and addresses the plan’s “Achilles’ Heel.” In particular, the book shows that the plan may violate the Equal Protection Clause from the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. Numerical examples are provided to show that the counterintuitive claims of the NPV originators and proponents that the plan will encourage presidential candidates to “chase” every vote in every state do not have any grounds. Finally, the book proposes a plan for improving the election system by combining at the national level the “one state, one vote” principle – embedded in the Constitution – and the “one person, one vote” principle. Under this plan no state loses its current Electoral College benefits while all the states gain more attention of presidential candidates.
In this paper we consider games with preference relations. The main optimality concept for such games is concept of equilibrium. We introduce a notion of homomorphism for games with preference relations and study a problem concerning connections between equilibrium points of games which are in a homomorphic relation. The main result is finding covariantly and contravariantly complete families of homomorphisms.
Basic problems of optimizing the structure of a country's electrical grid by incorporating storage facilities and renewable sources of energy into the grid are formulated, and the authors’ vision on how to approach some of these problems is offered. A game model for analyzing the potential of an electrical grid with storing facilities to serve its customers and for finding fair (equilibrium) electricity tariffs in it is discussed, and an elementary scheme for estimating advantages of using these fair tariffs by a customer of the grid is proposed.
The paper proposes two new approaches to designing efficient mathematical tools for quantitatively analyzing decision-making processes that small and medium price-taking traders undergo in forming and managing their portfolios of financial instruments traded in a stock exchange. Two mathematical models underlying these approaches are considered. If the trader can treat price changes for each financial instrument of her interest as those of a random variable with a known (for instance, a uniform) probability distribution, one of these models allows the trader to formulate the problem of finding an optimal composition of her portfolio as an integer programming problem. The other model is suggested to use when the trader does not possess any particular information on the probability distribution of the above-mentioned random variable for financial instruments of her interest while being capable of estimating the areas to which the prices of groups of financial instruments (being components of finite-dimensional vectors for each group) are likely to belong. When each such area is a convex polyhedron described by a finite set of compatible linear equations and inequalities of a balance kind, the use of this model allows one to view the trader’s decision on her portfolio composition as that of a player in an antagonistic game on sets of disjoint player strategies. The payoff function of this game is a sum of a linear and a bilinear function of two vector arguments, and the trader’s guaranteed financial result in playing against the stock exchange equals the exact value of the maximin of this function. This value, along with the vectors at which it is attained, can be found by solving a mixed programming problem. Finding an upper bound for this maximin value (and the vectors at which this upper bound is attained) is reducible to finding saddle points in an auxiliary antagonistic game with the same payoff function on convex polyhedra of disjoint player strategies. These saddle points can be calculated by solving linear programming problems forming a dual pair.
The geographic information system (GIS) is based on the first and only Russian Imperial Census of 1897 and the First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union of 1926. The GIS features vector data (shapefiles) of allprovinces of the two states. For the 1897 census, there is information about linguistic, religious, and social estate groups. The part based on the 1926 census features nationality. Both shapefiles include information on gender, rural and urban population. The GIS allows for producing any necessary maps for individual studies of the period which require the administrative boundaries and demographic information.
A model for organizing cargo transportation between two node stations connected by a railway line which contains a certain number of intermediate stations is considered. The movement of cargo is in one direction. Such a situation may occur, for example, if one of the node stations is located in a region which produce raw material for manufacturing industry located in another region, and there is another node station. The organization of freight traffic is performed by means of a number of technologies. These technologies determine the rules for taking on cargo at the initial node station, the rules of interaction between neighboring stations, as well as the rule of distribution of cargo to the final node stations. The process of cargo transportation is followed by the set rule of control. For such a model, one must determine possible modes of cargo transportation and describe their properties. This model is described by a finite-dimensional system of differential equations with nonlocal linear restrictions. The class of the solution satisfying nonlocal linear restrictions is extremely narrow. It results in the need for the “correct” extension of solutions of a system of differential equations to a class of quasi-solutions having the distinctive feature of gaps in a countable number of points. It was possible numerically using the Runge–Kutta method of the fourth order to build these quasi-solutions and determine their rate of growth. Let us note that in the technical plan the main complexity consisted in obtaining quasi-solutions satisfying the nonlocal linear restrictions. Furthermore, we investigated the dependence of quasi-solutions and, in particular, sizes of gaps (jumps) of solutions on a number of parameters of the model characterizing a rule of control, technologies for transportation of cargo and intensity of giving of cargo on a node station.
Event logs collected by modern information and technical systems usually contain enough data for automated process models discovery. A variety of algorithms was developed for process models discovery, conformance checking, log to model alignment, comparison of process models, etc., nevertheless a quick analysis of ad-hoc selected parts of a journal still have not get a full-fledged implementation. This paper describes an ROLAP-based method of multidimensional event logs storage for process mining. The result of the analysis of the journal is visualized as directed graph representing the union of all possible event sequences, ranked by their occurrence probability. Our implementation allows the analyst to discover process models for sublogs defined by ad-hoc selection of criteria and value of occurrence probability
Existing approaches suggest that IT strategy should be a reflection of business strategy. However, actually organisations do not often follow business strategy even if it is formally declared. In these conditions, IT strategy can be viewed not as a plan, but as an organisational shared view on the role of information systems. This approach generally reflects only a top-down perspective of IT strategy. So, it can be supplemented by a strategic behaviour pattern (i.e., more or less standard response to a changes that is formed as result of previous experience) to implement bottom-up approach. Two components that can help to establish effective reaction regarding new initiatives in IT are proposed here: model of IT-related decision making, and efficiency measurement metric to estimate maturity of business processes and appropriate IT. Usage of proposed tools is demonstrated in practical cases.