Federalism and Decentralization in Health Care


Book Description

Looking at Canada, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa and Switzerland, Federalism and Decentralization in Health Care examines the overall organization of the health system.




Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization


Book Description

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Evolutionary Multi-Criterion Optimization, EMO 2005, held in Guanajuato, Mexico, in March 2005. The 59 revised full papers presented together with 2 invited papers and the summary of a tutorial were carefully reviewed and selected from the 115 papers submitted. The papers are organized in topical sections on algorithm improvements, incorporation of preferences, performance analysis and comparison, uncertainty and noise, alternative methods, and applications in a broad variety of fields.




Decision Space


Book Description

In Decision Space: Multidimensional Utility Analysis, Paul Weirich increases the power and versatility of utility analysis and in the process advances decision theory. Combining traditional and novel methods of option evaluation into one systematic method, multidimensional utility analysis is a valuable new tool. The multiple dimensions of this analysis create a decision space broad enough to accommodate all factors affecting an option's utility. The book will be of interest to advanced students and professionals working in the subject of decision theory, as well as to economists and other social scientists.




Reinforcement and Systemic Machine Learning for Decision Making


Book Description

Reinforcement and Systemic Machine Learning for Decision Making There are always difficulties in making machines that learn from experience. Complete information is not always available—or it becomes available in bits and pieces over a period of time. With respect to systemic learning, there is a need to understand the impact of decisions and actions on a system over that period of time. This book takes a holistic approach to addressing that need and presents a new paradigm—creating new learning applications and, ultimately, more intelligent machines. The first book of its kind in this new and growing field, Reinforcement and Systemic Machine Learning for Decision Making focuses on the specialized research area of machine learning and systemic machine learning. It addresses reinforcement learning and its applications, incremental machine learning, repetitive failure-correction mechanisms, and multiperspective decision making. Chapters include: Introduction to Reinforcement and Systemic Machine Learning Fundamentals of Whole-System, Systemic, and Multiperspective Machine Learning Systemic Machine Learning and Model Inference and Information Integration Adaptive Learning Incremental Learning and Knowledge Representation Knowledge Augmentation: A Machine Learning Perspective Building a Learning System With the potential of this paradigm to become one of the more utilized in its field, professionals in the area of machine and systemic learning will find this book to be a valuable resource.




Decision Making


Book Description




The Challenger Launch Decision


Book Description

“An in-depth account of the events and personal actions which led to a great tragedy in the history of America’s space program.” —James D. Smith, former Solid Rocket Booster Chief, NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on January 28, 1986, millions of Americans became bound together in a single, historic moment. Many still vividly remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard about the tragedy. Diane Vaughan recreates the steps leading up to that fateful decision, contradicting conventional interpretations to prove that what occurred at NASA was not skullduggery or misconduct but a disastrous mistake. Why did NASA managers, who not only had all the information prior to the launch but also were warned against it, decide to proceed? In retelling how the decision unfolded through the eyes of the managers and the engineers, Vaughan uncovers an incremental descent into poor judgment, supported by a culture of high-risk technology. She reveals how and why NASA insiders, when repeatedly faced with evidence that something was wrong, normalized the deviance so that it became acceptable to them. In a new preface, Vaughan reveals the ramifications for this book and for her when a similar decision-making process brought down NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003. “Vaughn finds the traditional explanation of the [Challenger] accident to be profoundly unsatisfactory . . . One by one, she unravels the conclusions of the Rogers Commission.” —The New York Times “A landmark study.” —Atlantic “Vaughn gives us a rare view into the working level realities of NASA . . . The cumulative force of her argument and evidence is compelling.” —Scientific American




Enterprise Interoperability


Book Description

Composed of over 50 papers, "Enterprise Interoperability" ranges from academic research through case studies to industrial and administrative experience of interoperability. The international nature of the authorship continues to broaden. Many of the papers have examples and illustrations calculated to deepen understanding and generate new ideas. This is a concise reference to the state-of-the-art in software interoperability.




Trade-off Analytics


Book Description

Presents information to create a trade-off analysis framework for use in government and commercial acquisition environments This book presents a decision management process based on decision theory and cost analysis best practices aligned with the ISO/IEC 15288, the Systems Engineering Handbook, and the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge. It provides a sound trade-off analysis framework to generate the tradespace and evaluate value and risk to support system decision-making throughout the life cycle. Trade-off analysis and risk analysis techniques are examined. The authors present an integrated value trade-off and risk analysis framework based on decision theory. These trade-off analysis concepts are illustrated in the different life cycle stages using multiple examples from defense and commercial domains. Provides techniques to identify and structure stakeholder objectives and creative, doable alternatives Presents the advantages and disadvantages of tradespace creation and exploration techniques for trade-off analysis of concepts, architectures, design, operations, and retirement Covers the sources of uncertainty in the system life cycle and examines how to identify, assess, and model uncertainty using probability Illustrates how to perform a trade-off analysis using the INCOSE Decision Management Process using both deterministic and probabilistic techniques Trade-off Analytics: Creating and Exploring the System Tradespace is written for upper undergraduate students and graduate students studying systems design, systems engineering, industrial engineering and engineering management. This book also serves as a resource for practicing systems designers, systems engineers, project managers, and engineering managers. Gregory S. Parnell, PhD, is a Research Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas. He is also a senior principal with Innovative Decisions, Inc., a decision and risk analysis firm and has served as Chairman of the Board. Dr. Parnell has published more than 100 papers and book chapters and was lead editor of Decision Making for Systems Engineering and Management, Wiley Series in Systems Engineering (2nd Ed, Wiley 2011) and lead author of the Handbook of Decision Analysis (Wiley 2013). He is a fellow of INFORMS, the INCOSE, MORS, and the Society for Decision Professionals.




New Technology and Regional Development


Book Description

First Published in 2004. Since the second half of the seventies, a period of economic recession, a growing interest for technological change can be noticed in all ‘old’ industrial countries. The reason for this phenomenon is the conviction that the economic future of these countries will depend to a large degree on their ability to create new products and processes and to make these commercially viable. Hence the stimulation and subsidising of all kinds of Research and Development (R&D) activities by the governments of these countries. Against this background it was certainly not unexpected that the IGU Commisson on Industrial Change, presided by Godfrey Linge, decided to organise a congress on ‘Technology and Industrial Change.’ This congress was held in August 1985 at Nijmegen in the Netherlands. In this book some of the papers presented there are published. We are very happy that we were allowed to include the very interesting contributions of the representatives of Philips in Eindhoven and of the European Commission in Brussels.




Comparison of Statistical Experiments


Book Description

There are a number of important questions associated with statistical experiments: when does one given experiment yield more information than another; how can we measure the difference in information; how fast does information accumulate by repeating the experiment? The means of answering such questions has emerged from the work of Wald, Blackwell, LeCam and others and is based on the ideas of risk and deficiency. The present work which is devoted to the various methods of comparing statistical experiments, is essentially self-contained, requiring only some background in measure theory and functional analysis. Chapters introducing statistical experiments and the necessary convex analysis begin the book and are followed by others on game theory, decision theory and vector lattices. The notion of deficiency, which measures the difference in information between two experiments, is then introduced. The relation between it and other concepts, such as sufficiency, randomisation, distance, ordering, equivalence, completeness and convergence are explored. This is a comprehensive treatment of the subject and will be an essential reference for mathematical statisticians.