Sharif Digital Repository

There is a unanimous agreement that "systems thinking" helps both individuals and organizations make more intelligent and more effective decisions. On the other hand, the unsatisfactory rate of systems thinking evolution among managers, collegians, students and other stratums raises this question that, why such a useful, discriminating and tasteful concept in theory, does not spread with the desirable pace in practice. Where exactly does the problem originate from? The tragedy is more sensible when noting the fact that even those who know the concept methodically do not apply it in action and in their decisions. Unfortunately, despite relatively numerous literatures on changing beliefs,... 

The growing importance of energy consumption has become an integral part of many decision-making processes in various organizations. In this paper, a framework is proposed for an organization where the undertaken project is implemented by multi-skilled workforce and energy tariffs depending on the time-of-use. This is a real-life situation where energy tariffs are significantly high during the peak demand compared to the one in off peak demand in order to control overloaded consumption of energy. A formulation is developed for the problem to minimize the total cost of consuming required energy. The proposed formulation is validated using several small-scale instances solved by GAMS software.... 

In this work we show how Artificial Intelligence (AI) could effectively be used to expedite the decision making process in the early stages of the aircraft design process. We employ both Fuzzy Logic (FL) and Neural Network (NN) as two different schemes of the AI. The developed tools are intended to help to select the proper combination of engine thrust, wing area and the aircraft weight without going through elaborate details of other direct approaches. We further show how the AI could be applied to the specific class of light business jets which serves to validate these schemes. The results indicate the effectiveness of the AI approach in the preliminary aircraft design process. The actual... 

Line balancing problem plays an important role in the decision making process to increase efficiency and productivity. Recently, U-shaped layout in many production lines has replaced the traditional straight line layout using just-in-time concept. Here, we propose a model, using multi-objective decision making approach to the U-shaped line balancing problem, to offer enhanced decision maker flexibility, by allowing for conflicting goals. The assembly line operation efficiency is the most significant aim in our study, and this efficiency relates to management of resources and the solution of line balancing problem. First, the U-shaped line balancing problem is solved considering the model's... 

Cosine similarity and Probabilistic Linear Discriminant Analysis (PLDA) in i-vector space are two state-of-the-art scoring methods in speaker verification field. While PLDA usually gives better accuracy, Cosine Similarity Scoring (CSS) remains a widely used method due to simplicity and acceptable performance. In this domain, several channel compensation and score normalization methods have been proposed to improve the performance. We investigate non-speaker information in cosine similarity metric and propose a new approach to remove it from the decision making process. I-vectors hold a large amount of non-speaker information such as channel effects, language, and phonetic content. This type... 

Business intelligence (BI) is a managerial concept helping managers and organizations to manage information and make factual decisions. Some have introduced Business Intelligence as a process of turning data into information and then into knowledge. This concept has become a popular trend for businesses interested in adding value to their decision making processes. Measurement of maturity in implementing Business Intelligence process in organizations is considered a critical issue. Business intelligence like software development is a process, which expressed in terms of components such as artifacts and workflows. Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) is developed to define different... 

Localization of sensor nodes has become a fundamental requirement for many applications over Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). In this paper, we propose a range-free approach based on the Received Signal Strength (RSS) changes. A discrete and probabilistic localization method is offered to localize a moving beacon relative to sensor nodes. In this method we came to a more reliable and accurate result without increasing the number of sectors. We achieved a considerable improvement in localization reliability by defining the primary and secondary sectors and utilizing a Kalman approach for making decisions. The decision making process is based on the allocated probabilities given to each of... 

In today's competitive world, having an effective business intelligent (BI) system for monitoring and evaluation of industrial and product oriented organizations is vital. A perfect BI must help managers not only to speed up his decision making process; but also to increase quality of their decision. But how? One of the main specifications of an effective BI system is providing managers by correct format of information and at the correct time. Critical Success Factors (CSFs) are a kind of significant factors that must be considered in attaining an organization's goal; and key performance indicators (KPIs) are a type of quantitative and measurable CSF; and one character of an effective BI is... 

Supplier selection is a decision-making process to identify and evaluate suppliers for making contracts. Here, we use interval type-2 fuzzy values to show the decision makers' preferences and also introduce a new formula to compute the distance between two interval type-2 fuzzy sets. The performance of the proposed distance formula in comparison with the normalized Hamming, normalized Hamming based on the Hausdorff metric, normalized Euclidean and the signed distances is evaluated. The results show that the signed distance has the same trend as our method, but the other three methods are not appropriate for interval type-2 fuzzy sets. Using this approach, we propose a hierarchical... 

The growing importance of energy consumption has become an integral part of many decision-making processes in various organizations. In this paper, a framework is proposed for an organization where the undertaken project is implemented by multi-skilled workforce and energy tariffs depending on the time-of-use. This is a real-life situation where energy tariffs are significantly high during the peak demand compared to the one in off peak demand in order to control overloaded consumption of energy. A formulation is developed for the problem to minimize the total cost of consuming required energy. The proposed formulation is validated using several small-scale instances solved by GAMS software.... 

With the advent of semantic technology' access control cannot be done in a safe way unless the access decision takes into account the semantic relationships among the entities in a semantic-aware environment. The SBAC model (Semantic Based Access Control model) considers this issue in its decision making process. However' time plays a crucial role in new computing environments'which is not supported in SBAC. In this paper' we propose the Temporal Semantic Based Access Control (TSBAC) model' as an extension of SBAC' which enhances the specification of user-defined authorization rules by constraining time interval and temporal expression over users' history of accesses. TSBAC uses logical... 

In order to achieve a hydrogen economy, developing widespread hydrogen supply systems are vitally important. A large number of technological options exist and are still in development for hydrogen production, storage, distribution., which cause various pathways for supplying hydrogen. Besides the technical factors, there are other effective parameters such as cost, operability, reliability, environmental impacts, safety and social implications that should be considered when assessing the different pathways as optimal and viable long-term alternatives. To aid this decision-making process, we have developed a generic optimization-based model for the long-range energy planning and design of... 

This article proposes a new three-stage stochastic framework for dealing with predictable two-phase natural disasters in distribution systems. This framework is a multiobjective optimization, in which the amount of curtailed energy, the number of switching actions, and the vulnerability of operational components are selected as the main criteria for decision-making process. The optimization problem is formulated in the form of a stochastic mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem. In this article, a windstorm event followed by flooding is analyzed as a two-phase natural disaster. In this regard, the uncertainties associated with gust-wind speed, floodwater depths, and load demands are... 

Effective marketing is quite vital in many building construction projects that depend on the pre-sale cash in-flow. However, the unsafe condition of the under-construction projects postpones in-person customer visits to the completion date and complicates the marketing process. This safety concern is especially critical for the upper floor units. Although virtual tours of the buildings are used to show the project specifications, they do not convey the impression that customers receive in the real ambiance of in-person visits. This research proposes a novel method called semi-augmented reality to address the safety issue of the under-construction projects during the marketing process. In... 

Purpose: Dams require high-volume of construction materials and operations over the life cycle. This paper aims to select a proper type of dam structure that can significantly contribute to the sustainability of dam projects. Design/methodology/approach: This research proposes a complementary fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission assessment method for the alternate dam structure types to assist decision-makers in selecting sustainable choices. Related equations are developed for two common earthen and rock-fill dam structures types in Iran. These equations are then successfully applied to two real dam project cases where the significance of the achieved results are assessed and... 

This article proposes a new three-stage stochastic framework for dealing with predictable two-phase natural disasters in distribution systems. This framework is a multiobjective optimization, in which the amount of curtailed energy, the number of switching actions, and the vulnerability of operational components are selected as the main criteria for decision-making process. The optimization problem is formulated in the form of a stochastic mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem. In this article, a windstorm event followed by flooding is analyzed as a two-phase natural disaster. In this regard, the uncertainties associated with gust-wind speed, floodwater depths, and load demands are... 

This study proposes a novel socio-hydrological modeling framework for assessing the performance of complex water resources systems. It employs and integrates agent-based modeling (ABM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) into the socio-hydrological modeling framework to account for agents’ behaviors. Due to farmers’ major role in anthropogenic droughts, this paper mainly focuses on farmers’ behavior. The TPB framework and the agents’ behavioral rules in ABM are structured based on the data obtained from field questionnaires and interviews by the farmers in the Zarrineh River Basin as the main river feeding the Urmia Lake. The proposed modeling framework, including the TPB and ABM... 

Automation is acknowledged by distribution utilities as a successful investment strategy to enhance reliability and operation efficiency. However, practical approaches that can handle the complex decision-making process faced by decision makers to justify the long-term financial effects of distribution automation have remained scarce. An automated and remote-controlled sectionalizing switch play a fundamental role in an automated distribution network. This paper introduces a new optimization approach for distribution automation in terms of automated and remotely controlled sectionalizing switch placement. Mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) is utilized to model the problem. The proposed... 

The concerns of regulatory authority for the cost efficiency and service quality of distribution utilities has led them to implement monetary schemes, such as penalty/reward mechanism (PRM). PRM provides explicit financial incentives for distribution system operators (DSO) to maintain or improve their efficiency and quality of service. Although the effectiveness of the PRM is proven, analytical tools that can handle the complex decision-making process faced by decision makers to respond to PRM are scarce. This paper presents an approach for distribution system maintenance management in the presence of the PRM. The proposed approach tailors the maintenance plans by taking into account the... 

Distribution automation (DA) application for fault management in the electricity distribution networks is one of the main potential remedial actions to reduce customers' outage times and hence improve service reliability. As a result, various automation schemes have been developed and introduced in different countries and by different venders. The impacts of implementing a specific automation scheme on reliability indices of a given distribution system can be different from other available automation schemes. For this reason, when comparing the available automation schemes with each other or with the other reliability improvement measures, it is necessary to perform a course of reliability...