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List
of Papers for 2006:
(in reverse chronological order)
ESD-WP-2006-23
Simple Models of Influenza Progression within a Heterogeneous
Population
by
Richard C. Larson, Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals,
Engineering Systems Division, and Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, MIT
The focus
of this ‘OR framing paper’ is to introduce the OR
community to the need for new mathematical modeling of an influenza
pandemic and its control. By reviewing relevant history and literature,
one key concern that emerges relates to how a population’s
heterogeneity may affect disease progression. Another is to explore
within a modeling framework ‘social distancing’ as
a disease progression control method, where social distancing
refers to steps aimed at reducing the frequency and intensity
of daily human to human contacts. To depict social contact behavior
of a heterogeneous population susceptible to infection, a non-homogeneous
probabilistic mixing model is developed. Partitioning the population
of susceptibles into subgroups, based on frequency of daily human
contacts and infection propensities, a stylistic difference equation
model is then developed depicting the day-to-day evolution of
the disease. This simple model is then used to develop a preliminary
set of results. Two key findings are (1) early exponential growth
of the disease may be dominated by susceptibles with high human
contact frequencies and may not be indicative of the general population’s
susceptibility to the disease; and (2) social distancing may be
an effective non-medical way to limit and perhaps even eradicate
the disease. Much more decision-focused research needs to be done
before any of these preliminary findings may be used in practice.
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ESD-WP-2006-22
Strategies to Overcome Network Congestion in Infrastructure Systems
by
Jason W. Black and Richard C. Larson, Center for Engineering Systems
Fundamentals, Engineering Systems Division, MIT
Networked
Infrastructure systems deliver services and/or products from point
to point along the network. They include transportation networks
(e.g., rails, highways, airports, sea ports), telecommunication
networks (by frequency-bounded airwaves or cables), and utilities
(e.g., electric power, water, gas, oil, sewage). Each is a fixed
capacity system having marked time-of-day and day-of-week patterns
of demand. Usually, the statistics of demand, including hourly
patterns (i.e., means and variances) are well known and often
correlated with outside factors such as weather (short term) and
the general economy (longer term).
An infrastructure
system is typically difficult and expensive to design and construct.
Once built, it can have a mean lifetime from 20 years (telecommunications)
to over 100 years (water). As population and the economy grow,
increasingly large demands are being placed on infrastructure
systems. Eventually they must be upgraded due to lack of adequate
capacity and/or the need for improved technology. However, that
moment can be delayed, often for long periods, by the use of congestion
pricing to reduce peak demand. Congestion pricing provides incentives
to shift demand from peak time periods to lower demand periods.
This effectively increases the capacity of the system without
the need for additional investment.
Current
examples of congestion pricing schemes include: time of day congestion
pricing for autos in Singapore and London; for-profit 'toll-ways'
adjacent to freeways; time of day pricing for electricity; time
of day pricing for long distance telephone calls; revenue management
in airlines to balance out travel demands over the course of a
week and over the year; and auction type bidding for some infrastructure
services, with higher prices paid for congestion periods.
This paper
investigates congestion pricing across critical infrastructures
in terms of the potential benefits of forgone investment achieved
by reducing peak demand. It also presents several existing implementations
of congestion type pricing. We then look at the political and
economic impediments to widespread adoption of such pricing schemes.
Finally, the paper presents areas of future research to develop
congestion pricing strategies that provide efficiency gains and
are politically acceptable and amenable to implementation across
infrastructure domains.
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ESD-WP-2006-21
Offshoring: The Transition From Economic Drivers Toward Strategic
Global Partnership and 24-Hour Knowledge Factory
by
Amar Gupta, University of Arizona; Satwik Seshasai, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology; Sourav Mukherji, IIM Bangalore; and Auroop
Ganguly, Government of the United States of America
The concept
of offshoring of professional services first gained attention
slightly over 25 years ago. At that time, US companies began to
realize the cost-advantage of getting their computer software
developed in India and other countries. The concept gained momentum
with the advent of Internet and the availability of inexpensive
communication technologies. Unrelated events, such as the need
to address the Y2K problem, in a timebound manner, further increased
the use of computer personnel based in faraway places. Studies
conducted by professional organizations, such as ACM, IEEE, and
NSPE, focus on the cost and labor aspects of offshoring and its
direct impact on employment opportunities in the countries involved.
This paper broadens this perspective by emphasizing that the key
drivers for offshoring will be strategic, not economic, over time.
A formal mathematical model is presented to highlight the new
trend. Further, instead of a binary model in which the work is
performed in the country of the sponsoring organization or a different
country, we will gradually see a new work paradigm in which the
work is performed in a sequence in factories located in multiple
continents of the world. Such 24-Hour Knowledge Factories can
leverage factors beyond cost savings. One can employ professionals
in multiple parts of the world, perform tasks at all times of
the day, and bring new products and services quicker to the market.
Just as the advent of multiple shifts allowed machines to be utilized
round the clock leading to the benefits of the Industrial Revolution,
the creation of new globally distributed workforces and global
partnerships can lead to major strategic advantages for companies
and countries alike.
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ESD-WP-2006-20
Decision-Making in the Political and Technical Environments
by
David André Broniatowski and Prof. Annalisa L. Wiegel
Mutual
misunderstanding between decision-makers in the political and
technical environment leads to programs that experience cost overruns,
schedule delays and, often, cancellation. This paper compares
and contrasts the determinants of decision-making in the technical
and political realms, with the intention of demonstrating how
these decisions translate to cost, schedule and performance parameters.
Studies of those elements that are most salient to the policy
maker are informed by the political science literature. In particular,
studies of administrative, bureaucratic and Congressional decision-making
are instructive in determining how an engineering system interacts
with the political realm. So as to lend concreteness to this analysis,
we focus on NASA’s interactions with Congress surrounding
the Vision for Space Exploration, announced by President Bush
on January 14th, 2004.
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ESD-WP-2006-19-Bulk
Power Grid Risk Analysis: Ranking Infrastructure Elements According
to their Risk Significance
by
A. M. Koonce, G. E. Apostolakis, and B. K. Cook
Disruptions
in the bulk power grid can result in very diverse consequences
that include economic, social, physical, and psychological impacts.
In addition, power outages do not affect all end-users of the
system in the same manner. For these reasons, a risk analysis
of bulk power systems requires more than determining the likelihood
and magnitude of power outages; it must also include the diverse
impacts power outages have on the users of the system.
We propose
a methodology for performing a risk analysis on the bulk power
system. A power flow simulation model is used to determine the
likelihood and extent of power outages when components within
the system fail to perform their designed function. The consequences
associated with these failures are determined by looking at the
type and number of customers affected. Stakeholder input is used
to evaluate the relative importance of these consequences. The
methodology culminates with a ranking of each system component
by its risk significance to the stakeholders. The analysis is
performed for failures of infrastructure elements due to both
random causes and malevolent acts..
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ESD-WP-2006-18-House
of Security: Locale, Roles and Resources for Ensuring Information
Security Research-in-Progress
by
Wee Horng Ang, MIT, Yang W. Lee, Northeastern University, Stuart
E. Madnick, MIT, Dinsha Mistress, MIT, Michael Siegel, MIT, Diane
M. Strong, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Richard Y. Wang, MIT,
and Chrisy Yao, Suffolk University
In this
paper we redefine information security by extending its definition
in three salient avenues: locale (beyond the boundary of an enterprise
to include partner organizations), role (beyond the information
custodians’ view to include information consumers’
and managers’ views), and resource (beyond technical dimensions
to include managerial dimensions). Based on our definition, we
develop a model of information security, which we call the House
of Security. This model has eight constructs, Vulnerability, Accessibility,
Confidentiality, IT Resources for Security, Financial Resources
for Security, Business Strategy for Security, Security Policy
and Procedures, and Security Culture. We have developed a questionnaire
to measure the assessment and importance of information security
along these eight aspects. The questionnaire covers multiple locales
and questionnaire respondents cover multiple roles. Data collection
is currently in process. Results from our analysis of the collected
data will be ready for presentation at the conference.
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ESD-WP-2006-17-Reutilization
and Legal Protection of Non-Copyrightable Database Contents
by
Hongwei Zhu, MIT and Stuart Madnick, MIT
The availability
of data on the web and the improvement of technologies have made
it increasingly easy to reuse existing data to create new databases
and provide value-added services. Meanwhile, initial database
creators have been seeking legal protection for their data. After
presenting a brief history of legislation related to legal protection
for non-copyrightable database contents, we discuss challenging
issues to be considered in formulating a database protection regulation.
These issues can be addressed from the perspective of economics.
Results from a preliminary economic analysis are presented. The
findings indicate that depending on investment required to create
the initial database and the level of differentiation between
the initial database and the reuser database, the choice of a
social welfare-enhancing regulation can allow for no reuse, free
reuse, or fee-paying reuse.
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ESD-WP-2006-16-Global
Outsourcing of Professional Services
by
Satwik Seshasai, MIT and IBM and Amar Gupta, MIT and University
of Arizona
As a growing
number of firms outsource more of their professional services
across geographic and temporal boundaries, one is faced with a
corresponding need to examine the long-term ramifications on business
and society. Some persons are convinced that cost considerations
should reign as the predominant decision-making factor; others
argue that outsourcing means permanent job loss; and still others
believe outsourcing makes US goods and services more competitive
in the global marketplace. We assert that if outsourcing options
need to be analyzed in detail with critical objectivity in order
to derive benefits for the concerned constituencies.
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ESD-WP-2006-15-Toward
the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory in Software Development
by
Satwik Seshasai, MIT and IBM and Amar Gupta, MIT and University
of Arizona
“The
Sun never sets on the British Empire,” was a notion emphasized
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to highlight that
the British Empire was far-flung, and that the sun was always
visible from some part of this vast empire. While the British
Empire has gradually disintegrated, we can now coin an equivalent
notion: “The Sun never sets on the 24-hour Knowledge Factory!”
The notion
of the 24-hour Knowledge Factory can be traced back to the industrial
revolution. Since the installed equipment was scarce and costly,
the employees were scheduled to work in shifts of 8-16 hours in
order to use the manufacturing facilities on a round-the-clock
basis. With the advent of electronic computers and diminishing
costs for telecommunications, one developed the notion of 24-hour
Call Centers. Depending on the time of the call, it is automatically
directed to a call center that is active at that time. Using a
cluster of 3 to 4 call centers located in time zones 6-8 hours
apart from the time zone of the neighboring call center, one can
ensure that all employees of these geographically distributed
call centers are working during daytime in their respective countries.
The notion of multiple support centers was subsequently adapted
for supporting global communications networks over time. Now it
has become feasible for one to use a geographically distributed
workforce of highly trained professionals to complete an endeavor
in a much shorter timeframe as compared to a scenario in which
all personnel are based at one location, irrespective of where
location is.
By involving
specialized microchip design engineers located at multiple places
around the world, a semiconductor chip design firm may create
virtual “24-hour knowledge factories”. This allows
for an efficient design process that has a faster turnaround time.
It provides the firm with access to high-talent designers who
would otherwise have to move to a different country, or work at
odd hours of the night; some persons call the latter type of shift
as the “graveyard shift”. The creation of professional
service teams that transcend geographic and temporal boundaries
offers the potential to change the face of many industries. This
innovation will dramatically impact the manner in which companies
build, test, sell and support their products and services. Years
ago, people in India and the United States thought the time difference
was a negative - they thought it would hinder their ability to
work with US firms. Now that has switched around - for many projects
the time difference is a plus, as it enables the creation of the
24-hour Knowledge Factories described in this paper.
The 24-hour
Knowledge Factory will involve “offshoring” of part
of the endeavor. Today, offshoring is done primarily to reduce
costs. We believe that over time, the growth in offshoring will
also be fueled by the potential to achieve drastic reductions
in turnaround times for major endeavors. The focus of this paper
is on software development, and specifically on new product development.
The authors contend that efficient information management is the
key to incorporating 24-Hour Knowledge Factory concepts in such
development efforts, and describe models for achieving strategic
advantage with work teams located in three continents of the world.
This paper
uses a case study to highlight a 24-Hour Knowledge Factory model
with integrated data analysis. While this study involved two sites
within IBM, the findings and methods could be applied to endeavors
that use three or more geographically dispersed sites within any
corporation or across multiple collaborating companies. As compared
to traditional single-site operations, significant differences
were observed in information sharing, collaboration, and innovations
in work operations. The quantitative measures used in this case
study gauged data on aspects such as frequency and methods of
collaboration, social and technical networks, and differences
in handling strategic and tactical decisions. The qualitative
parameters were elicited through interviews in which the stakeholders
described their perceptions of the quantitative data, and their
motivations for decisions related to knowledge sharing. The primary
emphasis of the field study was to evaluate the role that spatial
and temporal differences play in the creation of new software
products, with this analysis serving as the foundation for studying
the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory paradigm.
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ESD-WP-2006-14-Toward
the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory
by
Amar Gupta, MIT and University of Arizona and Satwik Seshasai,
MIT and IBM
The term
“24-Hour Knowledge Factory” connotes a globally distributed
work environment in which members of the global team work on a
project around the clock; each member of the team works the normal
workday hours that pertain to his or her time zone. At the end
of such a workday, a fellow team member located in a different
time zone continues the same task. This creates the shift-style
workforce that was originally conceived in the manufacturing sector.
A globally distributed 24-hour call center is the simplest manifestation
of this paradigm. The true example of the 24-hour factory paradigm
discussed in this paper involves groups working together to accomplish
a given set of deliverables, such as a software project, and transcending
conventional spatial and temporal boundaries.
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ESD-WP-2006-13-Promoting
the Concept of Sustainable Transportation within the Federal System
- The Need to Reinvent the U.S. DOT
by
Ralph P. Hall, MIT and Joseph M. Sussman, MIT
This paper
argues that a major obstacle to progress towards sustainable development/transportation
is the lack of an integrated approach to decision-making within
the U.S. federal system. To address this problem, the concept
of sustainable transportation is first broadened to include the
transportation sector’s interconnections with other sectors.
This revised notion of sustainable transportation is then used
to help visualize the need for horizontal integration and co-optimization
of policies/regulations/initiatives across federal agencies. From
the assumption that a national strategy for sustainable development
will remain illusive in the short-term, a ‘U.S. DOT reinvention
model’ is endorsed as a useful mechanism to promote sustainable
development/transportation policy in the U.S.
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ESD-WP-2006-12-Trade-off/Positional
Analysis (with a Rawlsian Approach to Equity) as an Alternative
to Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) in Socio-technical Decisions
by
Ralph P. Hall, MIT and Nicholas A. Ashford, MIT
This paper
introduces a hybrid trade-off/positional analysis framework as
an alternative to cost-benefit analysis (CBA). As a decision-support
tool, the proposed framework [1] allows decision-makers not to
monetize or aggregate non-monetary factors over time; [2] invites
the entrance of stakeholders into the debate since there is greater
transparency as to who benefits and who is harmed by a particular
policy/program/project; [3] enables analysts to undertake a comparative
analysis of alternatives over time; and [4] takes into account
the important role of technological change in shaping the state
and performance of a system. In addition, a Rawlsian approach
to incorporating equity into decision-making is advocated.
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ESD-WP-2006-11-Advances
in Supply Chain Management: Potential to Improve Forecasting Accuracy
by
Shoumen Palit Austin Datta, MIT, Clive W. J. Granger, University
of California
Forecasting
is a necessity almost in any operation. However, the tools of
forecasting are still primitive in view of the great strides made
by research and the increasing abundance of data made possible
by automatic identification technologies, such as, radio frequency
identification (RFID). The relationship of various parameters
that may change and impact decisions are so abundant that any
credible attempt to drive meaningful associations are in demand
to deliver the value from acquired data. This paper proposes some
modifications to adapt an advanced forecasting technique (GARCH)
with the aim to develop it as a decision support tool applicable
to a wide variety of operations including supply chain management.
We have made an attempt to coalesce a few different ideas toward
a “solutions” approach aimed to model volatility and
in the process, perhaps, better manage risk. It is possible that
industry, governments, corporations, businesses, security organizations,
consulting firms and academics with deep knowledge in one or more
fields, may spend the next few decades striving to synthesize
one or more models of effective modus operandi to combine these
ideas with other emerging concepts, tools, technologies and standards
to collectively better understand, analyze and respond to uncertainty.
However, the inclination to reject deep rooted ideas based on
inconclusive results from pilot projects is a detrimental trend
and begs to ask the question whether one can aspire to build an
elephant using mouse as a model.
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ESD-WP-2006-10-Advances
in Supply Chain Management Decision Support Systems: Potential
for Improving Decision Support Catalysed by Semantic Interoperability
between Systems
by
Shoumen Palit Austin Datta, MIT
Globalization
has catapulted ‘cycle time’ as a key indicator of
operational efficiency [1] in processes such as supply chain management
(SCM). Systems automation holds the promise to augment the ability
of supply chain operations or supply networks to rapidly adapt
to changes, with minimal human intervention, under ideal conditions.
Business communities are emerging as loose federations or organization
of networks that may evolve to act as infomediaries in global
SCM. These changes, although sluggish, are likely to impact process
knowledge and in turn may be stimulated or inhibited by the availability
or lack of process interoperability, respectively. The latter
will determine operational efficiencies of supply chains. Currently
“community of systems” or organization of networks
(aligned by industry or business focus) contribute minimally in
SCM decisions because true collaboration remains elusive. Convergence
and maturity of multiple advances offers the potential for a paradigm
shift in interoperability. It may evolve hand-in-hand with [a]
the gradual adoption of the semantic web [2] with concomitant
development of ontological frameworks, [b] increase in use of
multi-agent systems and [c] advent of ubiquitous computing enabling
near real-time access to identification of objects and analytics
[4]. This paper examines some of these complex trends and related
technologies. Irrespective of the characteristics of information
systems, the development of various industry-contributed ontologies
for knowledge and decision layers, may spur self-organizing networks
of business communities and systems to increase their ability
to sense and respond, more profitably, through better enterprise
and extraprise exchange. In order to transform this vision into
reality, systems automation must be weaned from the syntactic
web and integrated with the organic growth of the semantic web.
Understanding of process semantics and incorporation of intelligent
agents with access to ubiquitous near real-time data “bus”
are pillars for “intelligent” evolution of decision
support systems. Software as infrastructure may integrate plethora
of agent colonies through improved architectures (such as, service
oriented architecture or SOA) and business communities aligned
by industry or service focus may emerge as hubs of such agent
empires. However, the feasibility of the path from exciting “pilots”
in specific areas toward an informed convergence of systemic real-world
implementation remains unclear and fraught with hurdles related
to gaps in knowledge transfer from experts in academia to real-world
practitioners. The value of interoperability between systems that
may catalyse real-time intelligent decision support is further
compromised by the lack of clarity of approach and tools. The
latter offers significant opportunities for development of tools
that may segue to innovative solutions approach. A critical mass
of such solutions may spawn the necessary systems architecture
for intelligent interoperability, essential for sustainable profitability
and productivity in an intensely competitive global economy. This
paper addresses some of these issues, tools and solutions that
may have broad applicability in several operations including the
management of adaptive supply-demand networks [7].
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ESD-WP-2006-09-Distance
Learning as a Tool for Poverty Reduction and Economic Development:
A Focus on Two Countries, China and Mexico
by
Richard C. Larson and M. Elizabeth Murray, MIT
Early
in 2003, the Director of Community Learning Centers (CLC) in Mexico,
Ms. Laura Ruiz, hosted visitors at the Virtual University at the
Tecnologico de Monterrey. Knowing their interest in learning more
about the CLC’s, she decided to take them on a trip to one
of the nearby towns called Dr. Arroyo, Nuevo Leon, located 400
km south of Monterrey, to show them a real picture of the CLC’s.
As soon as they arrived, they entered a classroom that she was
proud to show them. Users’ heads were seen peaking out above
almost all of the computer display screens, but she noticed that
one in the back appeared empty. She started talking to the students,
asking questions about what they were doing, when all of a sudden
a little head peaked out from behind the “empty” computer
display screen in the back. Ms. Ruiz and her guests were surprised
to see a ten-year old girl sitting at the computer. As she approached
the girl, Ms. Ruiz -– humoring her guests – asked
what she was doing there and the girl answered, “I have
taken the Basic Computer Abilities Course, and now I am taking
the labor certification process”. Hearing this, Ms Ruiz
became amazed to see that this little girl had finished a course
that was not designed for children. So Ms. Ruiz became worried
that since this girl was only ten years old, she might not get
the certificate. As soon as Ms. Ruiz got back to Monterrey, she
called to investigate the issue. They told her that they never
thought a child would finish the course, but that they did not
have a rule saying that a child could not get the certificate,
so for the first time they gave the certificate to a ten-year
old girl!
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ESD-WP-2006-08-Screening
for Real Options “In” an Engineering System: A Step
Towards Flexible System Development; PART I: The Use of Design
Matrices to Create an End-to-End Representation of a Complex Socio-Technical
System
by
Jason E. Bartolomei, Engineering Systems Division Ph.D. Candidate,
MIT, Richard de Neufville, Engineering Systems Division and Department
of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT, Daniel E. Hastings,
Engineering Systems Division and Department of Aeronautics
and Astronautics, MIT, Donna H. Rhodes, Engineering Systems Division
and Lean Aerospace Initiative, MIT
The goal
of this research is to develop an analytical framework for screening
for real options “in” an engineering system. Real
options is defined in the finance literature as the right, but
not the obligation, to take an action (e.g. deferring, expanding,
contracting, or abandoning) at a predetermined cost and for a
predetermined time. These are called "real options"
because they pertain to physical or tangible assets, such as equipment,
rather than financial instruments. Real options improve a system’s
capability of undergoing classes of changes with relative ease.
This property is often called “flexibility.” Recently,
the DoD has emphasized the need to develop flexible system in
order to improve operational, technical, and programmatic effectiveness.
The aim of this research is to apply real options thinking to
weapon acquisitions in order to promote the ability of weapon
system programs to deftly avoid downside consequences or exploit
upside opportunities.
The practice
of real options in systems engineering is a nascent field of inquiry.
One of the most significant challenges in applying real options
to engineering systems is the problem of identifying the most
efficacious points within the system to create options. In order
to identify the points of interest, systems engineers require
knowledge about the physical and non physical aspects of the system,
insight into sources of change, and the ability to examine the
dynamic behavior of the system. We propose a two-phase process
to perform this analysis. The first phase is a system representation
phase that seeks to create an end-to-end representation of engineering
system that includes endogenous interactions across system views
and interactions with a systems environment. The next phase is
an analysis phase that models the evolution of the engineering
system in order to identify the real options in the system. This
paper presents the system representation phase and proposes a
methodology for creating an end-to-end representation of an engineering
system.
The methodology
for representing an engineering system extends existing systems
engineering and architecting methods in two dimensions. First,
the framework couples traditional architecting views to represent
traceability and endogenous interactions within an engineering
system. Second, the framework includes views of the system not
represented in traditional engineering frameworks that includes
social networks and environmental interactions. The framework
uses coupled Design Structure Matrices (DSM) to represent the
traditional and new architecting views. The coupled DSMs are organized
into an Engineering System Matrix (ESM), which is a holistic representation
of an engineering system that captures all of the critical variables
and causal interactions across architectural elements. The result
is an analytic framework that captures the qualitative understanding
of the system into a single view that is conducive for deep quantitative
inquiry.
This paper
presents a discussion of pertinent literature, an overview of
the ESM framework and underlying theory. In addition, this paper
previews ongoing research using the ESM to identify options for
a mini-air vehicle (MAV) weapon development system.
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ESD-WP-2006-07-Encouraging
and Ensuring Successful Technology Transition in Civil Aviation
by
Karen Marais and Annalisa L. Weigel, Department of Aeronautics
and Astronautics, MIT
Technology
transitions are essential to transforming air traffic management
to meet future capacity needs. Encouraging and obtaining equipage
adoption is one crucial aspect of technology transitions. We propose
an approach for developing appropriate strategies to persuade
aviation stakeholders to transition to new technologies. Our approach
uses cost, benefit, and value distribution across stakeholders
and over time to determine which strategies are most appropriate
to persuading aircraft operators to adopt new equipage. Equipage
that may show an overall positive value can nevertheless fail
to provide value to individual stakeholders. Such imbalances in
value distribution between stakeholders or over time may lead
to stakeholder intransigence and can stymie efforts to transform
air traffic management systems. Leverage strategies that correct
these imbalances and accelerate the realization of value for all
stakeholders can enhance cooperation and increase the likelihood
of a successful transition to the new technology. We demonstrate
the application of the approach using the case of automatic dependent
surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B). The approach is also applicable
to a wide range of industries beyond aviation, such as the energy
sector and telecommunications.
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ESD-WP-2006-06-Transition
challenges for alternative fuel vehicle
and transportation systems
by
Jeroen Struben, John D. Sterman, MIT Sloan School of Management
Automakers
are now developing alternatives to internal combustion engines
(ICE), including hydrogen fuel cells and ICE-electric hybrids.
Adoption dynamics for alternative vehicles are complex due to
the enormous size and importance of the auto industry and vehicle
fleet. Diffusion of alternative vehicles is both enabled and constrained
by powerful positive feedbacks arising from scale and scope economies,
R&D, learning by doing, driver experience, word of mouth,
and complementary resources such as fueling infrastructure. We
describe a dynamic model of the diffusion and competition among
alternative fuel vehicles, including the coevolution of the fleet,
technology, driver behavior, and complementary resources. Here
we focus on the generation of consumer awareness of alternatives
through feedback from driving experience, word of mouth and marketing,
with a reduced form treatment of network effects and other positive
feedbacks (which we treat in other papers). We demonstrate the
existence of a critical threshold for sustained adoption of alternative
technologies, and show how the threshold depends on economic and
behavioral parameters. We show that word of mouth from those not
driving an alternative vehicle is important in stimulating diffusion.
Nevertheless, marketing and subsidies for alternatives to ICE
must remain in place for long periods for diffusion to become
self-sustaining. Expanding the model boundary to include endogenous
learning, technological spillovers and spatial coevolution of
fueling infrastructure adds additional feedbacks that further
suppress the diffusion of alternative vehicles.
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ESD-WP-2006-05-Context
Mediation Demonstration of Counter-Terrorism Intelligence (CTI)
Integration
by
Stuart E. Madnick, Allen Moulton, Michael D. Siegel, MIT Sloan
School of Management
Examination
of intelligence failures prior to the 9/11/01 attacks made clear
it that lack of effective information exchange among government
agencies hindered the capability of identifying potential threats
and preventing terrorist actions. A 2002 National Research Council
study noted that “Although there are many private and public
databases that contain information potentially relevant to counterterrorism
programs, they lack the necessary context definitions (i.e., metadata)
and access tools to enable interoperation with other databases
and the extraction of meaningful and timely information.”[14]
This report clearly recognized the importance of problems that
the semantic data integration research community has been studying.
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ESD-WP-2006-04-Understanding
& Modeling State Stability: Exploiting System Dynamics
by
Nazli Choucri, Christi Electris, Daniel Goldsmith, Dinsha Mistree,
Stuart E. Madnick, J. Bradley Morrison, Michael D. Siegel, Margaret
Sweitzer-Hamilton, MIT Sloan School of Management
The potential
loss of state stability in various parts of the world is a source
of threat to U.S. national security. Every case is unique, but
there are common processes. Accordingly, we develop a system dynamics
model of state stability by representing the nature and dynamics
of ‘loads’ generated by insurgency activities, on
the one hand, and by articulating the core features of state resilience
and its ‘capacity’ to withstand these ‘loads’,
on the other. The problem is to determine and ‘predict’
when threats to stability override the resilience of the state
and, more important, to anticipate propensities for ‘tipping
points’, namely conditions under which small changes in
anti-regime activity can generate major disruptions. On this basis,
we then identify appropriate actionable mitigation factors to
decrease the likelihood of ‘tipping’ and enhance prospects
for stability.
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ESD-WP-2006-03-Policy
for the Protection and Reuse of
Non-Copyrightable Database Contents
by
Hongwei Zhu, Stuart Madnick, Michael Siegel, MIT Sloan School
of Management
With the
increasing use of the Internet, many of us feel strongly about
the free and unfettered exchange and use of information. But the
actual situation is not that simple. After the European Union
adopted the Database Directive to provide legal protection for
non-copyrightable database contents, the U.S. has introduced six
legislative proposals, all of which failed to become a law. One
of the major difficulties of formulating a socially beneficial
database law is in finding the right balance between protecting
the incentives of creating publicly accessible databases (including
semi-structured web sites) and preserving adequate access to factual
data for value creating activities. We address the problem by
developing an extended spatial competition model that explicitly
considers the inefficiencies in policy administration. With the
model, we can determine various conditions and the corresponding
socially beneficial policy choices. The results show that, depending
on the cost level of database creation, the degree of differentiation
of the reuser database, and the efficiency of policy administration,
the socially beneficial policy choice can be protecting a legal
monopoly, encouraging competition via compulsory licensing, discouraging
voluntary licensing, or even allowing free riding. The results
provide useful insights to the formulation of a socially beneficial
database protection policy.
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ESD-WP-2006-02-Measuring
Broadband’s Economic Impact
by
William H. Lehr, Carlos A. Osorio, Sharon E. Gillett, Marvin A.
Sirbu
Does broadband
matter to the economy? Numerous studies have focused on whether
there is a digital divide, on regulatory impacts and investment
incentives, and on the factors influencing where broadband is
available. However, given how recently broadband has been adopted,
little empirical research has investigated its economic impact.
This paper presents estimates of the effect of broadband on a
number of indicators of economic activity, including employment,
wages, and industry mix, using a cross-sectional panel data set
of communities (by zip code) across the United States. We match
data from the FCC (Form 477) on broadband availability with demographic
and other economic data from the US Population Censuses and Establishment
Surveys. We find support for the conclusion that broadband positively
affects economic activity in ways that are consistent with the
qualitative stories told by broadband advocates. Even after controlling
for community-level factors known to influence broadband availability
and economic activity, we find that between 1998 and 2002, communities
in which mass-market broadband was available by December 1999
experienced more rapid growth in (1) employment, (2) the number
of businesses overall, and (3) businesses in IT-intensive sectors.
In addition, the effect of broadband availability by 1999 can
be observed in higher market rates for rental housing in 2000.
We compare state-level with zip-code level analyses to highlight
data aggregation problems, and discuss a number of analytic and
data issues that bear on further measurements of broadband’s
economic impact. This analysis is perforce preliminary because
additional data and experience are needed to more accurately address
this important question; however, the early results presented
here suggest that the assumed (and oft-touted) economic impacts
of broadband are both real and measurable.
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ESD-WP-2006-01-Managing
Shared Access to a Spectrum Commons
by
William Lehr, MIT and Jon Crowcroft, Cambridge University
The open
access, unlicensed or spectrum commons approach to managing shared
access to RF spectrum offers many attractive benefits, especially
when implemented in conjunction with and as a complement to a
regime of marketbased, flexible use, tradable licensed spectrum
([Benkler02], [Lehr04], [Werbach03]). However, as a number of
critics have pointed out, implementing the unlicensed model poses
difficult challenges that have not been well-addressed yet by
commons advocates ([Benjam03], [Faulhab05], [Goodman04], [Hazlett01]).
A successful spectrum commons will not be unregulated, but it
also need not be command & control by another name. This paper
seeks to address some of the implementation challenges associated
with managing a spectrum commons. We focus on the minimal set
of features that we believe a suitable management protocol, etiquette,
or framework for a spectrum commons will need to incorporate.
This includes: (1) No transmit only devices; (2) Power restrictions;
(3) Common channel signaling; (4) Mechanism for handling congestion
and allocating resources among users/uses in times of congestion;
(5) Mechanism to support enforcement (e.g., established procedures
to verify protocol is in conformance); (6) Mechanism to support
reversibility of policy; and (7) Protection for privacy and security.
We explain why each is necessary, examine their implications for
current policy, and suggest ways in which they might be implemented.
We present a framework that suggests a set of design principles
for the protocols that will govern a successful commons management
regime. Our design rules lead us to conclude that the appropriate
Protocols for a Commons will need to be more liquid ([Reed05])
than in the past: (1) Marketbased instead of C&C; (2) Decentralized/distributed;
and, (3) Adaptive and flexible (Anonymous, distributed, decentralized,
and locally responsive).
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