Thesis (S.M. in Technology and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 61-62). / If we are to enact better policy, fight crime and decrease poverty, we will need better computational models of how society works. In order to make computational social science a useful reality, we will need generative models of how social influence sprouts at the interpersonal level and how it leads to emergent social behavior. In this thesis, I take steps at understanding the predictors and conduits of social influence by analyzing real-life data, and I use the findings to create a high-accuracy prediction model of individuals' future behavior. The funf dataset which comprises detailed high-frequency data gathered from 25 mobile phone-based signals from 130 people over a period of 15 months, will be used to test the hypothesis that people who interact more with each other have a greater ability to influence each other. Various metrics of interaction will be investigated such as self-reported friendships, call and SMS logs and Bluetooth co-location signals. The Burt Network Constraint of each pair of participants is calculated as a measure of not only the direct interaction between two participants but also the indirect friendships through intermediate neighbors that form closed triads with both the participants being assessed. To measure influence, the results of the live funf intervention will be used where behavior change of each participant to be more physically active was rewarded, with the reward being calculated live. There were three variants of the reward structure: one where each participant was rewarded for her own behavior change without seeing that of anybody else (the control), one where each participant was paired up with two 'buddies' whose behavior change she could see live but she was still rewarded based on her own behavior, and one where each participant who was paired with two others was paid based on their behavior change that she could see live. As a metric for social influence, it will be considered how the change in slope and average physical activity levels of one person follows the change in slope and average physical activity levels of the buddy who saw her data and/or was rewarded based on her performance. Finally, a linear regression model that uses the various types of direction and indirect network interactions will be created to predict the behavior change of one participant based on her closeness with her buddy. In addition to explaining and demonstrating the causes of social influence with unprecedented detail using network analysis and machine learning, I will discuss the larger topic of using such a technology-driven approach to changing behavior instead of the traditional policy-driven approach. The advantages of the technology-driven approach will be highlighted and the potential political-economic pitfalls of implementing such a novel approach will also be addressed. Since technology-driven approaches to changing individual behavior can have serious negative consequences for democracy and the free-market, I will introduce a novel dimension to the discussion of how to protect individuals from the state and from powerful private organizations. Hence, I will describe how transparency policies and civic engagement technologies can further this goal of 'watching the watchers'. / by Dhaval D.K. Adjodah. / S.M.in Technology and Policy

Thesis (S.M. in Technology and Policy)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-97). / The climate change mitigation potential of energy technologies depends on how their lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions compare to global climate stabilization goals. Current methods for comparing technologies, which assess impacts over an arbitrary, fixed time horizon, do not acknowledge the critical link between technology choices and climate dynamics. In this thesis, I ask how we can use information about the temporal characteristics of greenhouse gases to design new metrics for comparing energy technologies. I propose two new metrics: the Cumulative Climate Impact (CCI) and Instantaneous Climate Impact (ICI). These metrics use limited information about the climate system, such as the year when stabilization occurs, to calculate tradeoffs between greenhouse gases, and hence the technologies that emit these gases. The CCI and ICI represent a middle ground between current metrics and commonly-proposed alternatives, in terms of their level of complexity and information requirements. I apply the CCI and ICI to evaluate the climate change mitigation potential of energy technologies in the transportation sector, with a focus on alternative fuels. I highlight key policy debates about the role of (a) natural gas as a "bridge" to a low carbon energy future and (b) third generation biofuels as a long-term energy solution. New metrics shed light on critical timing-related questions that current metrics gloss over. If natural gas is a bridge fuel, how long is this bridge? If algae biofuels are not commercially viable for the next twenty years, can they still provide a significant climate benefit? I simulate technology decisions using new metrics, and existing metrics like the Global Warming Potential (GWP), identifying the conditions where new metrics improve on existing methods as well as the conditions under which new metrics fail. I show that metrics of intermediate complexity, such as the CCI and ICI, provide a simple, reliable, and policy-relevant approach to technology evaluation and capture key features of the future climate system. I extend these insights to energy technologies in the electricity sector as well as a variety of environmental impact categories. / by Morgan R. Edwards. / S.M.in Technology and Policy

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2013. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 56-57). / This paper reports results of a study done to understand the Enterprise Architecture (EA) landscape in Singapore Government Agencies, to gather some best practices in doing EA in these agencies, and to postulate how the Singapore Government might get more value out of EA. Firstly, this paper reviews the EA field on why EA is important and what are some key challenges EA practitioners face. Secondly, this paper reviews and analyzes data from a EA survey of 18 Singapore Government Agencies. The analysis is done by comparing against data from a similar survey collected from over 100 organizations worldwide. In addition, the analysis also draws upon EA research done by MIT's Center for Information System Research. Thirdly, this paper reviews best practices and a case study collected from a subset of the studied Singapore Government Agencies. This paper concludes by rounding up the key findings and hypothesizing that there is a need for stronger inhouse design/architecting capabilities within the Singapore Government. / by Ming Fai Wong. / S.M.in Engineering and Management

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2014. / "September 2014." Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 46-47). / A Neighborhood Power Producer business solution, which aggregates customers and therefore employs economies of scale, is one solution to the energy access issue of most developing economies. In this approach, entrepreneurs contract with a group of colocated residents or businesses to provide modem energy services. This service can be grid-tied or off-grid, serving as either backup power to the central electricity grid or as primary power, depending on access to the electric grid and/or the quality and availability of power. These systems are essentially micro-grids with distributed generation. These developing world Neighborhood Power Producers will also benefit from the rising demand for a more distributed electric grid as a solution to the threat of adverse weather like hurricanes and super storms in developed economies. Cyber security threats are also leading to increased research into distributed power generation systems. This provides technological advances that are powered by investments in developed markets. The developing economies can essentially leapfrog their more developed counterparts with regards to grid-resiliency. The goal of this thesis is to examine broad trends in the Neighborhood Power Producer business model and what strategies are necessary for business sustainability in the short, mid, and longer term. / by Adeyemi Adepetu. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2009. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 155-158). / A recent search of headlines shows a high number of maritime collisions and accidents. The USS Hartford, a nuclear submarine, recently surfaced into an oil tanker just after the running aground of the USS Port Royal in Hawaii. Internationally, a French and British submarine collided in the Atlantic Ocean. The high frequency of these maritime accidents points to the need for a better decision support in ship and submarine navigation. Towards this end, this thesis proposes a mobile decision support tool to aid maritime commanders in maintaining situational awareness and aiding in navigation and collision avoidance. The Mobile Situational Awareness Tool (MSAT), specifically designed for submarine commanders but extensible to all maritime settings, provides mobile information for health and status monitoring and on-the-fly path planning capabilities. The functional and informational requirements for MSAT were identified through an in-depth analysis of submarine operations, specifically through a cognitive task analysis. The MSAT design incorporates a path planning algorithm that accounts for depth, land, visibility, and other contacts to propose the most efficient path from start to finish, especially useful for navigation in littoral regions. The MSAT also provides health and status monitoring capabilities, tracking many of the important systems across a submarine to provide information to the commander, as well as maintain high situational awareness. Human subject experiments showed that when compared to paper charts, the navigation tool in the MSAT performs significantly better with regards to both path length and the time it takes to plan a new path. / (cont.) For health and status monitoring, a survey of current task times revealed potential savings by the MSAT by decreasing both the average and variability of task time. By reducing the number of physical movements needed by commanders through the use of a mobile tool, time is saved that can be used for task reallocation, or promote a change in task flow. There are many potential benefits for both the Navy and the commercial maritime community that the MSAT can provide. However, before the MSAT can become operational, there are some system implementation issues that must first be addressed. These range from an analysis of the hardware and software required, to the changes in training that might come from the addition of a new tool. Future work is needed in this area to help move forward so that the benefits can be realized across the maritime community. / by Geoffrey P. Carrigan. / S.M.

Thesis (S.M. in Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, System Design and Management Program, 2011. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-103). / Innovation processes are multifaceted. Different studies usually focus on different facets of innovations without being integrated into a complete innovation system. In this thesis, system dynamics and system architecture approaches are adopted to integrate different studies in innovations and to develop a more holistic view of innovation systems. Three key elements, knowledge diversity, spatial proximity, and strategic relatedness, are found to be fundamental to innovations after analyzing and comparing different studies. However, these three factors derived from resource-based view and knowledge-based view do not seem sufficient to explain the evolutionary behaviors of innovations. Therefore, another two factors, mutation mechanisms and dynamic capabilities, are proposed to supplement the original three factors in the analysis of innovation systems. / by Po Chia Chen. / S.M.in Engineering and Management

Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2003. / "June 2003." / Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-63). / This thesis explores how truckload carriers use conditional bids within the framework of a combinatorial auction to win more business and balance their existing networks. Because a considerable portion of a truckload carrier's cost of serving a given lane is associated with the probability of finding a follow-on load (i.e. economies of scope), bidding on a lane-by-lane basis may not accurately reflect a carrier's true cost of serving that lane. In a combinatorial auction, a truckload carrier can more accurately reflect its true cost of serving a given lane by offering package discounts, conditional on winning lanes that increase the probability of finding follow-on loads. Though a considerable amount has been written about the economics of truckload carrier's operations and the benefits of combinatorial auctions to shippers, few have studied conditional bidding from a bidder's (carrier's) perspective. This thesis makes three contributions. First, an explanation of why bidders do and don't submit conditional bids in combinatorial auctions is provided. Second, a model of carrier costs functions, including package discounts (a measure of economies of scope) is developed. Finally, this thesis examines regional pricing differences, and quantifies the amount by which carriers will change their prices in different regions of the US. / by Clinton Lee Plummer. / M.Eng.in Logistics

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2012. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references. / Recent disasters have highlighted the need for more effective supply chain management during emergency response. Planning and prioritizing the use of trucks and helicopters to transport humanitarian aid to affected communities is a key logistics challenge. This dissertation explores ways to improve humanitarian transportation planning by building on the strengths of both humans and models. The changing, urgent, multi-objective context of humanitarian aid makes it challenging to formulate and deploy useful planning models. Humans are better able to understand the context, but struggle with the complexity of the problem. This research investigates the strengths and weaknesses of human transportation planners in comparison with models, with the goal of supporting both- better human decision-making and better models for humanitarian transportation planning. Chapter 2 investigates how experienced humanitarian logisticians build transportation plans in a simulated emergency response. Based on an ethnographic study of ten logistics response teams, I show how humans come to understand the problem and its objectives through sensemaking, and solve it through a search-like series of decisions guided by goal-oriented decision rules. I find that the definition of objectives is an important strength of the sensemaking process, and that the human reliance on greedy search may be a weakness of human problem-solving. Chapter 3 defines a performance measure for humanitarian transportation plans, by measuring the importance of the objectives identified in the ethnographic study. I use a conjoint analysis survey of expert humanitarian logisticians to quantify the importance of each objective and develop a utility function to value the performance of aid delivery plans. The results show that the amount of cargo delivered is the most important objective and cost the least; experts prefer to prioritize vulnerable communities and critical commodities, but not to the exclusion of others. Chapter 4 investigates the performance of human decision-making approaches in comparison to optimization models. The human decision-making processes found in Chapter 2 are modeled as heuristic algorithms and compared to a mixed-integer linear program. Results show that optimization models create better transportation plans, but that human decision processes could be nearly as effective if implemented consistently with the right decision rules. / by Erica L. Gralla. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 44). / As companies become more global and begin to outsource manufacturing and other services, the uncertainty in the supply resource increases. Demand uncertainties increase as these same companies expand into new countries to serve new customers. The globalization of business has created problems that many companies do not know how to overcome. One way of overcoming these challenges is to implement a process called global sales and operations planning (S&OP). Sales and operations planning is a collaborative process that aligns the supply side of an organization with the demand side. Aligning the goals of the different departments eliminates the "silo" mentality and creates a streamlined organization. This streamlined organization works as one team with the goal of meeting the financial expectations set by the executive team. Global sales and operations planning is a process used to match supply and demand throughout the world. To do this effectively, the process must be divided into multiple processes based on the characteristics of the supply chain for the product, the business units within the company, and geography that the business unit is located in. / (cont.) When the S&OP process is divided correctly, it allows the executive members of the company to communicate financial expectations to each of the business units, while the individual business units can match the supply and demand characteristics of the product. Vascucorp. is a company that is facing the same problems that many other companies face when trying to implement an S&OP process into their company. This thesis will focus on trying to form a common platform that companies can use to implement a successful global sales and operations planning process. / by Christopher Michael Honstain. / M.Eng.in Logistics

Thesis (M. Eng. in Logistics)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 66). / The objective of the study is to find an optimal inventory distribution in a retail three-echelon environment, consisting of a supplier, a DC, and stores. An inventory model is built by replicating the echelons' periodic, order-up-to-level policies with all echelons' transactions integrated. Network carrying cost is set as an objective function, while the store target service level and the store's minimum order-up-to-levels are set as constraints. A heuristic approach, that combines the optimization and simulation methods, is used to find the optimal inventory distribution. The results show that the optimal network carrying cost can be achieved by having low inventory and low service level at the DC. In addition, the impact of the echelons' deviations from the optimal policies as well as the impact of the upstream echelon's service disruptions on the other echelons confirms the interrelation between the echelons in the network. The analyses also illustrate that high target service level can be accomplished by keeping high inventory at the stores and the DC. / by Rintiya Arkaresvimun. / M.Eng.in Logistics