Toward Solving Complex Human Problems

Toward Solving Complex Human Problems
Author: Brian E. White
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 157
Release: 2020-12-18
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1000328902

This book serves three basic purposes: (1) a tutorial-type reference for complex systems engineering (CSE) concepts and associated terminology, (2) a recommendation of a proposed methodology showing how the evolving practice of CSE can lead to a more unified theory, and (3) a complex systems (CSs) initiative for organizations to invest some of their resources toward helping to make the world a better place. A wide variety of technical practitioners—e.g., developers of new or improved systems (particularly systems engineers), program and project managers, associated staff/workers, funders and overseers, government executives, military officers, systems acquisition personnel, contract specialists, owners of large and small businesses, professional society members, and CS researchers—may be interested in further exploring these topics. Readers will learn more about CS characteristics and behaviors and CSE principles and will therefore be able to focus on techniques that will better serve them in their everyday work environments in dealing with complexity. The fundamental observation is that many systems inherently involve a deeper complexity because stakeholders are engaged in the enterprise. This means that such CSs are more difficult to invent, create, or improve upon because no one can be in total control since people cannot be completely controlled. Therefore, one needs to concentrate on trying to influence progress, then wait a suitable amount of time to see what happens, iterating as necessary. With just three chapters in this book, it seems to make sense to provide a tutorial introduction that readers can peruse only as necessary, considering their background and understanding, then a chapter laying out the suggested artifacts and methodology, followed by a chapter emphasizing worthwhile areas of application.

Learning to Solve Complex Scientific Problems

Learning to Solve Complex Scientific Problems
Author: David H. Jonassen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2017-09-25
Genre: Education
ISBN: 135156059X

Problem solving is implicit in the very nature of all science, and virtually all scientists are hired, retained, and rewarded for solving problems. Although the need for skilled problem solvers has never been greater, there is a growing disconnect between the need for problem solvers and the educational capacity to prepare them. Learning to Solve Complex Scientific Problems is an immensely useful read offering the insights of cognitive scientists, engineers and science educators who explain methods for helping students solve the complexities of everyday, scientific problems. Important features of this volume include discussions on: *how problems are represented by the problem solvers and how perception, attention, memory, and various forms of reasoning impact the management of information and the search for solutions; *how academics have applied lessons from cognitive science to better prepare students to solve complex scientific problems; *gender issues in science and engineering classrooms; and *questions to guide future problem-solving research. The innovative methods explored in this practical volume will be of significant value to science and engineering educators and researchers, as well as to instructional designers.

Transforming Command

Transforming Command
Author: Eitan Shamir
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2011-01-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804772037

The book tells the story of the theory and history of the mission command approach (decentralized command) and the attempts by different armies to adopt and reform according to this approach.

Dialogues with Social Robots

Dialogues with Social Robots
Author: Kristiina Jokinen
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 477
Release: 2016-12-23
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9811025851

This book explores novel aspects of social robotics, spoken dialogue systems, human-robot interaction, spoken language understanding, multimodal communication, and system evaluation. It offers a variety of perspectives on and solutions to the most important questions about advanced techniques for social robots and chat systems. Chapters by leading researchers address key research and development topics in the field of spoken dialogue systems, focusing in particular on three special themes: dialogue state tracking, evaluation of human-robot dialogue in social robotics, and socio-cognitive language processing. The book offers a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners in both academia and industry whose work involves advanced interaction technology and who are seeking an up-to-date overview of the key topics. It also provides supplementary educational material for courses on state-of-the-art dialogue system technologies, social robotics, and related research fields.

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible
Author: Vlad Petre Glăveanu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 1812
Release: 2023-01-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3030909131

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible represents a comprehensive resource for researchers and practitioners interested in an emerging multidisciplinary area within psychology and the social sciences: the study of how we engage with and cultivate the possible within self, society and culture. Far from being opposed either to the actual or the real, the possible engages with concrete facts and experiences, with the result of transforming them. This encyclopedia examines the notion of the possible and the concepts associated with it from standpoints within psychology, philosophy, sociology, neuroscience and logic, as well as multidisciplinary fields of research including anticipation studies, future studies, complexity theory and creativity research. Presenting multiple perspectives on the possible, the authors consider the distinct social, cultural and psychological processes - e.g., imagination, counterfactual thinking, wonder, play, inspiration, and many others - that define our engagement with new possibilities in domains as diverse as the arts, design and business.

Towards Extensible and Adaptable Methods in Computing

Towards Extensible and Adaptable Methods in Computing
Author: Shampa Chakraverty
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2018-11-04
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9811323488

This book addresses extensible and adaptable computing, a broad range of methods and techniques used to systematically tackle the future growth of systems and respond proactively and seamlessly to change. The book is divided into five main sections: Agile Software Development, Data Management, Web Intelligence, Machine Learning and Computing in Education. These sub-domains of computing work together in mutually complementary ways to build systems and applications that scale well, and which can successfully meet the demands of changing times and contexts. The topics under each track have been carefully selected to highlight certain qualitative aspects of applications and systems, such as scalability, flexibility, integration, efficiency and context awareness. The first section (Agile Software Development) includes six contributions that address related issues, including risk management, test case prioritization and tools, open source software reliability and predicting the change proneness of software. The second section (Data Management) includes discussions on myriad issues, such as extending database caches using solid-state devices, efficient data transmission, healthcare applications and data security. In turn, the third section (Machine Learning) gathers papers that investigate ML algorithms and present their specific applications such as portfolio optimization, disruption classification and outlier detection. The fourth section (Web Intelligence) covers emerging applications such as metaphor detection, language identification and sentiment analysis, and brings to the fore web security issues such as fraud detection and trust/reputation systems. In closing, the fifth section (Computing in Education) focuses on various aspects of computer-aided pedagogical methods.

Transparent Urban Development

Transparent Urban Development
Author: Benjamin W. Stanley
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2017-07-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319589105

This book studies both the tangible benefits and substantial barriers to sustainable development in the city of Phoenix, Arizona. Utilizing mixed research methods to probe downtown Phoenix’s political economy of development, this study illustrates how non-local property ownership and land speculation negatively impacted a concerted public-private effort to encourage infill construction on vacant land. The book elaborates urban sustainability not only as a set of ecological and design prescriptions, but as a field needing increased engagement with the growth-based impetus, structural economic forces, and political details behind American urban land policy. Demonstrating how land use policies evolved in relation to Phoenix’s historical dependence on outside investment, and are now interwoven across jurisdictional scales, the book concludes by identifying policy intervention points to increase the sustainability of Phoenix’s development trajectory.

Optimal Enterprise

Optimal Enterprise
Author: Mikhail V. Belov
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2021-07-28
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1000344088

In the modern world, most gross product is created within Enterprise firms, project programs, state agencies, transnational corporations and their divisions, as well as various associations and compositions of the above entities. Enterprises, being, on the one hand, complex, and, on the other hand, widespread systems, are the subject matter of cybernetics, system theory, operations research, management sciences and many other fields of knowledge. However, the complexity of the system obstructs the development of mathematically rigorous foundations for Enterprise control. Moreover, methods of operations research and related sciences, which are widely used in practice, provide optimization of the constituents of an Enterprise, without modeling it as a whole system. But the optimization of parts does not lead to the optimality of the whole, and, also, the absence of top-down and holistic mathematical models of Enterprise contradicts the principle of holism and the system approach. The approach in this book looks first at Enterprise Systems and their essential aspects as complex sociotechnical systems composed of integrated sets of structural and process models (Chapters 1 and 2). A uniform description of all the heterogeneous fields of the modern Enterprise (marketing, sales, manufacturing, HR, finance, etc.) is then made, and the Enterprise Control Problem is posed as a top-down and holistic mathematical optimization problem (Chapter 3). Original models and methods of contract theory (Chapter 4), technology management (Chapter 5), human behavior and human capital (Chapter 6) and complex activity and resource planning (Chapter 7) are developed to solve the problem. Structural processes and mathematical models constitute an Optimal Enterprise Control Framework (Chapter 8) that provides a practical solution to the Enterprise Control Problem. This book is a resource for postgraduate and doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers and professors with research interests in the following fields of science: Fundamental Complex Systems study, Complex Systems Engineering, Enterprise Systems Engineering Applications of Operations Research, Optimization, Probability and Stochastic processes to Management Science, Economics and Business Theory of the Firm Business and Management – general, strategy/leadership, organization management, operations management and management information systems Theory of Business Processes, Business Processes Improvement and Reengineering