Cooperative Solution Research Articles

Cooperative Repair Scheduling and Service Restoration for Distribution Systems With Soft Open Points

Fault management is one of the crucial functions of Smart Grid to bring system back to normal operation from fault events. In this paper, we propose a multi-period cooperative solution for the jointly repair and restoration problem in distribution systems (DSs) to minimize the de-energized loads. In the proposed scheme, the novel fully-controlled power-electronic device SOP (soft open point) and fault isolation are included to accelerate system restoration. As the repair and restoration process goes forward, system topology changes frequently. How to determine the control mode of SOPs considering their characteristics during the entire restoration process is rarely studied in the literature. To this end, we present a new virtual power flow based automatic solution to adaptively perform control mode switching for the SOPs in faulted DS. Furthermore, a co-optimization model is formulated that coordinates SOP control, repair scheduling and DS restoration to obtain optimal repair and switch action sequences matching SOP control mode for DS resilience enhancement. The fault isolation is also conducted, since it has great impacts on repair and switch operations and can guarantee the safety of repair crews in practice. Numerical simulations on a modified IEEE 123-node test system and a large-scale actual distribution system verify the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Make-in-India: Moving from a Monocentric to a Polycentric Response to the COVID-19 Crisis!

Abstract The paper will look at the initial and subsequent Indian government’s response to the COVID-19 focusing event. The strategy used to tackle the initial Covid-19 wave in India was copied from resource-rich countries and authoritarian countries and due to centralization bias in India’s institutions, a monocentric response to the crisis was the default instead of cooperative solutions. However, the response to the pandemic should have been by multiple decision centers and based on local and institutional knowledge, considering India’s institutions, culture, and state capacity, for a “Make-in-India” polycentric response. Solving large-scale health externalities requires coproduction to deal with nested externalities more effectively instead of monocentric global responses. I propose policy considering previous epidemic responses focusing on polycentric governance where civil society is incentivized.

Corruption versus efficiency in water allocation under uncertainty: is there a trade-off?

ABSTRACT In the absence of a cooperative solution to the problem of rights over shared water, water allocation through third-party intervention is most commonly used. This paper considers water allocation within a federal set-up with the requisite legal institutions to enforce third-party adjudication and tries to capture the politically charged motivations that often guide such allocations. It compares two mechanisms generally used by central planners to allocate water between up- and downstream regions, namely fixed and proportional allocation rules. By considering a corrupt central planner, this paper models the underlying political manoeuvring that drives the assignment of water rights. It is found that the politically pliable central planner’s choice of allocation rule depends on the expected state of nature. Interestingly, the corrupt central planner’s equilibrium choice of allocation rule turns out to be efficient, unless the problem of severe water scarcity is expected to occur.

A dynamic multicriteria game of renewable resource extraction with environmentally concerned players

We introduce a multi-objective discrete-time competitive model of renewable resource extraction in which the standard economic objective is supplemented with an environmental one. Non-cooperative and cooperative solutions in feedback strategies are derived and compared with the solutions established for a standard single-criterion dynamic game.

Should fiscal policies be centralized in a monetary union? A dynamic game approach

In this paper we analyze dynamic interactions in a monetary union with three fiscal players (the governments of the countries concerned) and a common central bank in the presence of exogenous shocks. The model is calibrated for the euro area and includes a fiscally more solid core block denoted as country 1 as well as a fiscally less solid periphery block represented by countries 2 and 3. Introducing two periphery countries allows us to capture different attitudes of the periphery countries towards the goal of sustainable fiscal performance. Moreover, different coalition scenarios are modelled in this study including a fiscal union, a coalition of periphery countries and a coalition of fiscal-stability oriented countries. The exogenous shocks are calibrated in such a way as to describe the last major crises in the euro area, namely the financial crisis, the European sovereign debt crisis, the Covid-19 crisis, and the Ukraine war (energy price) crisis. Using the OPTGAME algorithm we calculate a cooperative Pareto and non-cooperative feedback Nash equilibrium solutions for the modelled scenarios. The fully cooperative solution yields the best results. The different non-cooperative scenarios allow insights into the underlying trade-off between economic growth, price stability and fiscal stability.

Cooperative Games Based on Coalition Functions in Biform Games

In this paper, we try to study a class of biform games with the coalition function from the cooperation of players. For this purpose, we interpret the biform games as cooperative games by defining a characteristic function of minimax representation based on the coalition function and giving the core and Shapley value as cooperative solutions. The relations between the coalition function and the characteristic function are investigated in terms of additivity and convexity, and the properties associated with the characteristic function, such as individual rationalities and cores, are compared with the corresponding results. The relations among the solutions of the normal-form game, biform game, and cooperative game are discussed with several examples.

Generalization of the social coalitional equilibrium structure

We generalize the notion of Ichiishi (Econometrica 49(2):369–377, 1981)’s social coalitional equilibrium to a multi-layered coalition structure with parameters, in which agents can incorporate simultaneously multiple coalition structures with multiple independent coalition-deviation opportunities. For each opportunity, agents play a social coalitional equilibrium (SCE) game, called a sub-parametric SCE game, constrained by external environment (parameters and joint decisions of all other sub-parametric SCE games). The generalized social coalitional equilibrium (GSCE) concept is, therefore, considered to be a synthesis of the Nash equilibrium concept and the cooperative solution concept. We provide the definition of GSCE and give the proof of existence theorem. Through some applications to general equilibrium models, the GSCE concept provides a conceptual framework for describing coexisting different industries having independent investment opportunities and their simultaneously determined industrial organizations.

Academic Engagement in Sport for Development: Niche or Growing Community?

Abstract Over the last two decades, the sport for development (SFD) sector has grown significantly, and there has been a concurrent increase in research and educational activities to support the field. In particular, academic institutions are taking a more significant role, contributing to a growing body of literature and developing numerous SFD-specific courses. Despite these initiatives and the important role assigned to academia, academic activities related to SFD have remained fragmented along geographic or disciplinary lines, and our knowledge of academic activities and collaborations is limited and focused on actors in the Global North. This study seeks to address these gaps and, through an international survey of academic institutions, aims to (1) establish the teaching, research and partnership activities within and between academic institutions around the globe; and (2) identify challenges and inform solutions for greater cooperation within and between academic institutions in the SFD context. Overall, our results show that the SFD is a highly multidisciplinary field involving institutions from a perhaps wider-than-expected range of countries. However, funding, support and recognition of SFD and associated academic actors, especially in the Global South, remains limited. To conclude, we propose potential ways forward to address some of these issues.

Study on the Evolution of the Game of Willingness to Cooperate between Residents and Separation Enterprises in Waste Separation Considering the Convenience of Separation Facilities.

The distributivity and complexity of separation facilities in waste separation cooperation are incorporated into the factors influencing the payoff of waste separation cooperation. The game payment matrix of waste separation cooperation is constructed based on the distributivity and complexity of separation facilities. The equilibrium solution of waste separation cooperation is obtained through the evolutionary game. The influence of different changes in distributivity and complexity of separation facilities on the willingness to cooperate in waste separation is explored through numerical analysis of cases. The study shows that when the distributivity of separation facilities is certain, the lower the complexity of separation facilities, the higher the willingness of residents and enterprises to cooperate; when the complexity of separation facilities is certain, the willingness of residents and enterprises to cooperate rises and then falls with the increase of distributivity of separation facilities; finally, when the distributivity and complexity of separation facilities change at the same time, the willingness of residents and enterprises to cooperate shows different changes with the different changes of two separation facilities convenience factors.

Cooperative Solutions for Network Games with Quadratic Utilities

This paper analyzes the public goods model with linear quadratic utilities in which each player determines the intensity of the activity they take, which can also be described as a network game with local payoff complementarity, as well as positive payoffs and negative quadratic costs. Players play cooperative games with each other, and cooperative solutions when the game is the planner’s optimal concern for the collective, describing each player’s optimal action in maximizing the individual and public interest. They are implemented programmatically to facilitate simple computations. In these games, players’ activities can be linked to their positions in the local interaction network. The cooperative actions taken by any player are proportional to their Katz-Bonacich centrality in a complementary linear quadratic game. In other words, higher Katz-Bonacich centrality, higher action. We then use a comparative statics framework to analyse the effect that changes in individual variables have on cooperative actions.

Cooperative Solutions in Multi-Star Network Games

A model also known as multi-agent systems, namely the multistar model is considered. In a multi-agent system, a two-level game is played, the first-level is the external game, and the second-level is the internal game. An approach is proposed how to distribute the benefits to players in the first-level game and the second-level game. The characteristic functions are constructed for the multi-star model. Based on the proposed characteristic functions, the combination of the Shapley value and the proportional solution as natural optimal principle to distribute the benefits in the first-level game and in the second-level game is proposed.

Cooperative Differential Games with Pairwise Interactions in Pollution Control Problems

This paper establishes a new class of dynamic games which contain two phenomena often observed in real-life, differential network games and pairwise interactions. It is assumed that the vertices of the network are players, and the edges are connections between them. By cooperation, a particular type of characteristic function is introduced. Then, the cooperative solutions are constructed, proportional solution and the Shapley value. Finally, the results are illustrated by an example.

RegTech: Analysis of the aggregators in the Swiss startups’ ecosystem during the pandemic

Following the Great Financial Crisis, the emergence of digital technologies and the end of banking secrecy (“Swiss say goodbye to banking secrecy”, 2017), financial technology (FinTech) and regulatory technology (RegTech) startups have been offering products in the financial regulatory sector. This trend has increased since the outbreak of COVID-19. Most of the studies on RegTech have focused on reviewing the literature on the macro context and the issues of vast amount of regulation (Arner et al., 2017). Today the academic literature about case studies in regulatory technology is not proposing any solution of cooperation or aggregation of RegTech’s startups in Switzerland. Due to the lack of papers about RegTech in Switzerland, we adopt an approach already used for case studies in the FinTech area (Foster & Heeks, 2013; Burtch et al., 2013) through exploratory investigation through interviews and literature review. The findings of our article have allowed us to analyse the topics and the applications in the RegTech ecosystem provided by startups to Swiss banks. We examine also the aggregations, incubators, and associations active in Switzerland Swisscom, International RegTech Association (IRTA), and F10 (a Swiss FinTech incubator based in Zurich) to examine how they can bring RegTech solutions of the RegTech startups into the banks.

Two characterizations of cost share equilibria

We consider pure exchange economies with a finite number of private goods and the choice of non-Samuelsonian public goods. For this type of economies, [5] proposed the notion of cost share equilibrium with individual payments for public goods varying according to individual benefits. This situation arises naturally when a level of provision is interpreted as a whole configuration of public policies or when cost share functions are interpreted as voluntary contributions rather than predetermined tax systems (see [31]). We establish the equivalence of cost share equilibria with cooperative and non-cooperative game-theoretic solutions: 1. we characterize cost share equilibria as those allocations which cannot be improved upon by society; 2. we characterize cost share equilibria as the Nash equilibria of a game with two players. The cooperative solutions analyzed in the paper are defined via a contribution scheme which captures the fraction of the total cost of collective goods that each coalition of agents is expected to cover.

Cooperative Solutions for Working Capital Cost Management

An advancement of the framework for reduction and redistribution of joint working capital costs in financial supply chain networks with combined topology is represented: factoring, reverse factoring, and inventory financing were chosen as the financial supply chain instruments to reduce the cost of joint working capital, a characteristic function is set and Core and Shepley values are chosen as optimality principles, the developed framework is compared with similar methods constructed by other authors, and also tested on the case study of the automotive industry.

Cooperative Relay Networks Based on the OAM Technique for 5G Applications

Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) is an intrinsic property of electromagnetic waves. Great research has been witnessed in the last decades aiming at exploiting the OAM wave property in different areas in radio and optics. One promising area of particular interest is to enhance the efficiency of the available communications spectrum. However, adopting OAM-based solutions is not priceless as these suffer from wave divergence especially when the OAM order is high. This shall limit the practical communications distance, especially in the radio regime. In this paper, we propose a cooperative OAM relaying system consisting of a source, relay, and destination. Relays help the source to transmit packets to the destination by providing an alternative connection between source and destination. This cooperative solution aims on the one hand, through best-path selection, on increasing the communications range. On the other hand, through the parallel transmission orders allowed by OAM carrying waves, the system could raise its total transmission throughput. Simulation results show that combining a cooperative relay with OAM improves the system throughput compared to using each element separately. In addition, the proposed cooperative relaying OAM outperforms the cooperative relaying non-orthogonal multiple access scheme, which is a key spectrally efficient technique used in 5G technology.

CNTS: Cooperative Network for Time Series

The use of deep learning techniques in detecting anomalies in time series data has been an active area of research with a long history of development and a variety of approaches. In particular, reconstruction-based unsupervised anomaly detection methods have gained popularity due to their intuitive assumptions and low computational requirements. However, these methods are often susceptible to outliers and do not effectively model anomalies, leading to suboptimal results. This paper presents a novel approach for unsupervised anomaly detection, called the Cooperative Network Time Series (CNTS) approach. The CNTS system consists of two components: a detector and a reconstructor. The detector is responsible for directly detecting anomalies, while the reconstructor provides reconstruction information to the detector and updates its learning based on anomalous information received from the detector. The central aspect of CNTS is a multi-objective optimization problem, which is solved through a cooperative solution strategy. Experiments on three real-world datasets demonstrate the state-of-the-art performance of CNTS and confirm the effectiveness of the detector and reconstructor. The source code for this study is publicly available on GitHub <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>a</i></sup> .

Comparison of Methods of Organization and Management Efficiency in Dynamic Models of Cournot Oligopoly

Nash and Stackelberg equilibria and cooperative solutions for dynamic game-theoretic Cournot oligopoly models in normal form with inhomogeneous agents are found analytically. Cooperative game-theoretic Cournot oligopoly models of three persons in the form of the von Neumann–Morgenstern and Gromova–Petrosyan characteristic functions are studied, including the calculation of the Shapley vector. A comparative analysis of the payoffs of agents, according to the solutions obtained, is carried out for games in normal form and in the form of a characteristic function.

The Role and Effectiveness of the Cooperative Business Model in Economic Recovery Strategy and Resilience Building Post-Covid-19: A Co-operative solution to disasters

Whereas economic crises often require co-operative approaches to stabilize, recover and revive the free market system, Covid-19 has triggered a new debate regarding the role of the cooperative business model in the resilience of enterprises and economies. A major question donor community and development partners interested in private sector approach to resilience are asking is whether to go through Micro, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs) or cooperatives. The cooperative enterprise has been disparaged as an ineffective, non-attractive business model compared to the competitive enterprise MSME model. The main objective of the study was to assess the performance and effectiveness of the cooperative model vis-à-vis MSME model in supporting economic recovery and resilience building post-shocks. The study, based on Systems Theory, adopted a historical scoping research design and used a literature review approach. The findings revealed that economic recovery models that seek to recover, restore, and revive a collapsed capitalist system are mostly “co-operative” in nature, and are critical in stabilizing fragile economic systems. The cooperative business model: (i) is robust enough to rescue economies from collapse and reverse economic fortunes, and (ii) has capacity challenges in cooperative governance that need to be addressed for the model to effectively contribute to resilience building in future. Economic recovery from Covid-19 should focus on addressing capacity challenges in cooperative governance and establishing ‘Marshall Plan Style’ programme to strengthen their role in fostering economic resilience. The focus should be on levels of capitalisation of cooperatives, strengthened governance and cooperative entrepreneurship, ensuring robust oversight to cushion members, and de-risking them from the threat of governance-induced collapse, erring on the side of appropriate response in times of crises.

Porous N-doped C/VB-group VS2 composites derived from perishable garbage to synergistically solve the environmental and electromagnetic pollution

The cooperative solution to environmental pollution and electromagnetic pollution is a big problem in environmental governance. Herein, N-doped C/VB-group flower-like VS2 composites were prepared using waste soybean husks recovered from the vegetable market as raw material through ordinary carbonization and hydrothermal method. The distinctive honeycomb-like porous structure of soybean husk contributes to multiple scattering and reflection and builds an interconnected conductive network. In addition, the presence of VS2 enriches the loss mechanism and significantly modulates the electromagnetic parameters of the composite material, generating a strong attenuation capability and ideal impedance matching. As a result, the composites exhibit an excellent electromagnetic wave (EMW) absorption performance with an ultra-low reflection loss (RL) value of −62.74 dB at a thickness of only 1.70 mm, and the effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) is up to 6.04 GHz (covering the entire Ku-band). The radar cross section (RCS) simulation further demonstrates the effectiveness of the composites in dissipating EMW (-6.69 dB m2 at 0°) in actual applications. The results showed that the C/VS2 composites have excellent EMW absorption performance, realized the reuse of waste soybean husks with high added value, and made it possible to solve electromagnetic pollution and environmental pollution together. Particularly, the dielectric sum-quotient model was further validated. It is crucial for nonmagnetic materials to modulate the sum and quotient of the real and imaginary parts of their dielectric constants to obtain excellent EMW absorption performance.