The purpose of my research is to contribute to the field of forecasting from a methodological perspective as well as to the field of crude oil as an application area to test the performance of my methodological contributions and assess their merits. In sum, two main methodological contributions are presented. The first contribution consists of proposing a mathematical programming based approach, commonly referred to as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), as a multidimensional framework for relative performance evaluation of competing forecasting models or methods. As opposed to other performance measurement and evaluation frameworks, DEA allows one to identify the weaknesses of each model, as compared to the best one(s), and suggests ways to improve their overall performance. DEA is a generic framework and as such its implementation for a specific relative performance evaluation exercise requires a number of decisions to be made such as the choice of the units to be assessed, the choice of the relevant inputs and outputs to be used, and the choice of the appropriate models. In order to present and discuss how one might adapt this framework to measure and evaluate the relative performance of competing forecasting models, we first survey and classify the literature on performance criteria and their measures – including statistical tests – commonly used in evaluating and selecting forecasting models or methods. In sum, our classification will serve as a basis for the operationalisation of DEA. Finally, we test DEA performance in evaluating and selecting models to forecast crude oil prices. The second contribution consists of proposing a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) based approach as a multidimensional framework for relative performance evaluation of the competing forecasting models or methods. In order to present and discuss how one might adapt such framework, we first revisit MCDA methodology, propose a revised methodological framework that consists of a sequential decision making process with feedback adjustment mechanisms, and provide guidelines as to how to operationalise it. Finally, we adapt such a methodological framework to address the problem of performance evaluation of competing forecasting models. For illustration purposes, we have chosen the forecasting of crude oil prices as an application area.

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird der Beschaffungsprozess der MAN Nutzfahrzeuge AG analysiert. Zu diesem Zweck werden drei verschiedene Methoden angewendet. Das Ziel besteht darin herauszufinden, inwieweit die Berücksichtigung ökologischer Aspekte den Entscheidungsprozess beeinflusst, sodass nachhaltige Beschaffung eine sinnvolle Option bieten kann. Dazu werden verschiedene Beschaffungsalternativen unter Verwendung der Ansätze zur Lebenszykluskostenrechnung, Ökobilanzierung und Hemmnisanalyse verglichen. Ziel ist es, Empfehlungen für zukünftige Investitionsentscheidungen abzuleiten. Die vorliegende Ausarbeitung zeigt, dass die Ausweitung der Investitionsbetrachtung auf den gesamten Lebenszyklus weit über konventionelle Ansätze hinaus gehen.

Objective: To complete a cost-minimization analysis (CMA) of the cost of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) and axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in the management of early-stage breast cancer (ESBC) in a hypothetical Ontario hospital setting. Methods: Decision-analysis modeling, with a decision-tree and Markov states, was used to estimate hospital costs for the two treatment options. The model was populated with data from the literature and costs from the Ontario Case Costing Initiative, a publicly accessible, government-sponsored, costing database. Model variability and parameter uncertainty were quantified by probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA). Results: The SLNB treatment algorithm was cost-minimizing compared to the ALND-only treatment option. The costs of treating postoperative complications did not contribute to the incremental average cost. Conclusion: A treatment algorithm that involves SLNB as the initial axillary-staging procedure in the setting of ESBC offers a cost-savings over the ALND-only option. This result is generalizable to all Ontario hospitals.

Objective: To complete a cost-minimization analysis (CMA) of the cost of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) and axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) in the management of early-stage breast cancer (ESBC) in a hypothetical Ontario hospital setting. Methods: Decision-analysis modeling, with a decision-tree and Markov states, was used to estimate hospital costs for the two treatment options. The model was populated with data from the literature and costs from the Ontario Case Costing Initiative, a publicly accessible, government-sponsored, costing database. Model variability and parameter uncertainty were quantified by probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA). Results: The SLNB treatment algorithm was cost-minimizing compared to the ALND-only treatment option. The costs of treating postoperative complications did not contribute to the incremental average cost. Conclusion: A treatment algorithm that involves SLNB as the initial axillary-staging procedure in the setting of ESBC offers a cost-savings over the ALND-only option. This result is generalizable to all Ontario hospitals.

The complexity of the strategic decision making environments, in which busi- nesses and governments live in, makes such decisions more and more difficult to make. People and organizations with access to the best known decision support modelling and analysis tools and methods cannot seem to benefit from such re- sources. We argue that the reason behind the failure of most current decision and game theoretic methods is that these methods are made to deal with operational and tactical decisions, not strategic decisions. While operational and tactical decisions are clear and concise with limited scope and short-term implications, allowing them to be easily formalized and reasoned about, strategic decisions tend to be more gen- eral, ill-structured, complex, with broader scope and long-term implications. This research work starts with a review of the current dominant modelling and analysis approaches, their strengths and shortcomings, and a look at how pioneers in the field criticize these approaches as restrictive and unpractical. Then, the work goes on to propose a new paradigm shift in how strategic decisions and conflicts should be modelled and analyzed. Constrained Rationality is a formal qualitative framework, with a robust method- ological approach, to model and analyze ill-structured strategic single and multi- agent decision making situations and conflicts. The framework brings back the strategic decision making problem to its roots, from being an optimization/efficiency problem about evaluating predetermined alternatives to satisfy predetermined pref- erences or utility functions, as most current decision and game theoretic approaches treats it, to being an effectiveness problem of: 1) identifying and modelling explic- itly the strategic and conflicting goals of the involved agents (also called players and decision makers in our work), and the decision making context (the external and internal constraints including the agents priorities, emotions and attitudes); 2) finding, uncovering and/or creating the right set of alternatives to consider; and then 3) reasoning about the ability of each of these alternatives to satisfy the stated strategic goals the agents have, given their constraints. Instead of assuming that the agents’ alternatives and preferences are well-known, as most current decision and game theoretic approaches do, the Constrained Rationality framework start by capturing and modelling clearly the context of the strategic decision making situation, and then use this contextual knowledge to guide the process of finding the agents’ alternatives, analyzing them, and choosing the most effective one. The Constrained Rationality framework, at its heart, provides a novel set of modelling facilities to capture the contextual knowledge of the decision making sit- uations. These modelling facilities are based on the Viewpoint-based Value-Driven - Enterprise Knowledge Management (ViVD-EKM) conceptual modelling frame- work proposed by Al-Shawa (2006b), and include facilities: to capture and model the goals and constraints of the different involved agents, in the decision making situation, in complex graphs within viewpoint models; and to model the complex cause-effect interrelationships among theses goals and constraints. The framework provides a set of robust, extensible and formal Goal-to-Goal and Constraint-to Goal relationships, through which qualitative linguistic value labels about the goals’ op- erationalization, achievement and prevention propagate these relationships until they are finalized to reflect the state of the goals’ achievement at any single point of time during the situation. The framework provides also sufficient, but extensible, representation facilities to model the agents’ priorities, emotional valences and attitudes as value properties with qualitative linguistic value labels. All of these goals and constraints, and the value labels of their respective value properties (operationalization, achievement, prevention, importance, emotional valence, etc.) are used to evaluate the different alternatives (options, plans, products, product/design features, etc.) agents have, and generate cardinal and ordinal preferences for the agents over their respective alternatives. For analysts, and decision makers alike, these preferences can easily be verified, validates and traced back to how much each of these alternatives con- tribute to each agent’s strategic goals, given his constraints, priorities, emotions and attitudes. The Constrained Rationality framework offers a detailed process to model and analyze decision making situations, with special paths and steps to satisfy the spe- cific needs of: 1) single-agent decision making situations, or multi-agent situations in which agents act in an individualistic manner with no regard to others’ current or future options and decisions; 2) collaborative multi-agent decision making situ- ations, where agents disclose their goals and constraints, and choose from a set of shared alternatives one that best satisfy the collective goals of the group; and 3) adversarial competitive multi-agent decision making situations (called Games, in gamete theory literature, or Conflicts, in the broader management science litera- ture). The framework’s modelling and analysis process covers also three types of con- flicts/games: a) non-cooperative games, where agents can take unilateral moves among the game’s states; b) cooperative games, with no coalitions allowed, where agents still act individually (not as groups/coalitions) taking both unilateral moves and cooperative single-step moves when it benefit them; and c) cooperative games, with coalitions allowed, where the games include, in addition to individual agents, agents who are grouped in formal alliances/coalitions, giving themselves the ability to take multi-step group moves to advance their collective position in the game. ....

The purpose of this study is to prepare a geotechnical microzonation map regarding the suitability of the residential areas in EskiSehir downtown area. In order to obtain the microzonation map, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) based Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is used. For this analysis, the slope, flood susceptibility, soil, depth to groundwater table, swelling potential and liquefaction potential layers are prepared. The weight values to the layers and rank values to the classes of each layer are assigned by applying Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) and Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) methods. Two geotechnical microzonation maps are obtained as outputs of these methods. The study area is categorized into three different zones regarding the foundation suitability of residential areas as: (1) Areas suitable for settlement / (2) Provisional settlement areas / (3) Areas requiring detailed geotechnical investigations. The maps prepared using SAW and AHP methods are found to be consistent with each other. The geotechnical microzonation map prepared using AHP method is recommended as the final map of the study area.

Despite nearly 50 years of attempts at reform, the US defense acquisition system continues to deliver weapon systems over budget, behind schedule, and with performance shortfalls. Why has acquisition reform failed? Three potential contributors were identified in the literature: the misalignment of incentives, a lack of a systems view, and a lack of objective evaluation criteria. This thesis considers these problems in the context of the most recent effort to transform the defense acquisition enterprise, evolutionary acquisition. First, game theory was employed to analyze the incentives of participants in the defense acquisition enterprise regarding the use of immature technology. It was found that there is a tragedy of the commons at work where acquisition programs serve as a common resource for stakeholders to meet their goals. The result is that participants are incentivized to use immature technology in contradiction of evolutionary acquisition policies. Second, the cost and performance of evolutionary acquisition in the context of the defense acquisition system was analyzed using a discrete event simulation. What was found was that evolutionary acquisition may lead to better performance from fielded systems and lower cost programs but also that the cost of operating the acquisition system as whole may actually rise. Finally, a method using price indices was developed to translate the gain in buying power resulting from improvements to the defense acquisition system into a monetary valuation. This allows for the application of options analysis to determine whether or not it is cost effective to pursue a potential improvement. A comparison with a more traditional approach revealed that simply using the NPV of cost savings may significantly understate value.

Σήμερα, ίσως περισσότερο από κάθε άλλη περίοδο στο παρελθόν, η ποιότητα έχει αναδειχθεί ως η ουσιώδης προϋπόθεση επιβίωσης των προϊόντων και των υπηρεσιών. Ο γκουρού της ποιότητας E.W. Deming το 1980 έγραφε: «Στο τέλος του αιώνα θα υπάρχουν δύο είδη επιχειρήσεων. Αυτές που εφαρμόζουν Συστήματα Ολικής Ποιότητας και εκείνες που δεν θα υπάρχουν πλέον στον επιχειρηματικό χώρο». Ο αφορισμός αυτός ίσως ακούγεται υπερβολικός. Το γεγονός όμως ότι ζούμε σε ένα έντονα ανταγωνιστικό και παγκοσμιοποιημένο περιβάλλον, ιδιαίτερα σε μια τέτοια περίοδο οικονομικής κρίσης, κάνει κατανοητό πως το κλειδί για την επιβίωση και την αποτελεσματικότητα των επιχειρήσεων είναι η υψηλή ποιότητα των προϊόντων και των υπηρεσιών που παρέχουν και η σύνδεση τους με την ικανοποίηση του πελάτη. Σκοπός της παρούσας διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι, αφενός, η μελέτη εκείνων των μοντέλων χωροθέτησης που αφορούν την κάλυψη της ζήτησης των προϊόντων / υπηρεσιών και αφετέρου η ενσωμάτωση, σε αυτά, της ποιότητας ως χαρακτηριστικό των εγκαταστάσεων που πρόκειται να χωροθετηθούν. / The purpose of this thesis is to describe the facility location models regarding to the demand covering of products and services and to integrate quality as a characteristic of the facilities.

Segregationen i Sverige har ökat de senaste åren vilket skapat ett allt större samhällsproblem. Det är därför viktigt att kommunerna i ett tidigt stadie aktivt börjar arbeta mot segregation och för social hållbarhet. Med denna studie och dess metodutveckling vill vi främja arbetet för mindre svenska tätorter genom att ta fram och testa en metod som kommuner kan använda vid en kartläggning av segregation. För att kunna hantera segregationens mångsidiga problemställning har flera metodsteg använts. En litteraturgenomgång resulterade i sex variabler som alla har betydande påverkan på segregationen. Dessa var fastighetsbestånd, förvärvsfrekvens, inrikes- och utrikesfödda, trångboddhet, utbildning och ålder. En enkätundersökning genomfördes sedan med 14 samhällsplanerare för att rangordna de variabler som litteraturgenomgången påvisade. Rangordningen användes sedan i metoden rank sum weights, som sedermera ledde fram till en multikriterieanalys (MKA) baserad på en linjär additiv metod. Målet med studien är att kunna presentera en kartläggning för segregationen i Bollnäs tätort utifrån den metod vi har utvecklat. Resultatet från studien visar att Bollnäs tätort har fyra områden som klassas som “mest segregerade” och tre områden som klassas som “minst segregerade”. Dessa resultat har testats med tre validitets- och reliabilitetsmetoder vilka var Index of Dissimilarity, intervju, samt känslighetsanalys. Resultatet från de tre testerna påvisar tydliga tendenser och snarlika resultat från vår metod, vilket indikerar att vår metod är robust och trovärdig. Behovet av ordentliga kartläggningar likt vår studie framkommer bland annat i intervjun där en planerare från Bollnäs kommun fick peka ut de fem områden personen ansåg vara mest segregerade. För dessa fem områden pekade planeraren ut ett område som enligt vår studie var minst segregerat, vilket påvisar svårigheten kring segregationsfrågan. Vår förhoppning med denna studie är att skapa en metod som främjar kommuners arbete med social hållbarhet. / Segregation in Sweden has been rising in recent years, which has lead to an increase in social problems. It is therefore important that municipalities, in an early stage, actively begin to work against segregation and towards social sustainability. With this study and its methodology we want to encourage smaller Swedish cities by developing and testing a method that municipalities can use in mapping of segregation. To handle segregation's complex problems, several of method steps have been applied. A literature review resulted in six variables, all of which have a significant impact on segregation. The variables were: housing tenure, employment rates, domestic/foreign-born, overcrowding, education and age. A survey was then conducted with 14 experts in the urban planning sector. The planners were asked to rank the variables that the literature review highlighted. The rankings were then used to create rank sum weights, which later led to a multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) based on a linear additive method. The aim of the study is to present a mapping of the segregation in Bollnäs urban area based on the method we have developed. The result of the study shows that out of 15 areas in Bollnäs urban area, four were classified as "most segregated" and three areas classified as "least segregated". These results have been tested using three validity and reliability methods: The Index of Dissimilarity, interview and sensitivity analysis. The results of the three tests demonstrate clear trends and similar results compared with our method, which indicates that our method is robust and trustworthy. The necessity for proper mapping of segregation is demonstrated by the interview where a planner from Bollnäs municipality was given the chance to pinpoint five areas the person considered to be most segregated. For these five areas, the planner pointed out one area that according to our study was least segregated, which proves the difficulty of identifying segregation. Our hope with this study is to create a method that support municipalities work with social sustainability.

The main aim of this diploma thesis was to evaluate accounts of foreign exchange for students. The evaluation was made for two potencial students with different preferences. Another aim is carried out survey and later compare all results.