Iterative Negotiation Research Articles

A Human–AI interaction paradigm and its application to rhinocytology

This article explores Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HCAI) in medical cytology, with a focus on enhancing the interaction with AI. It presents a Human–AI interaction paradigm that emphasizes explainability and user control of AI systems. It is an iterative negotiation process based on three interaction strategies aimed to (i) elaborate the system outcomes through iterative steps (Iterative Exploration), (ii) explain the AI system’s behavior or decisions (Clarification), and (iii) allow non-expert users to trigger simple retraining of the AI model (Reconfiguration). This interaction paradigm is exploited in the redesign of an existing AI-based tool for microscopic analysis of the nasal mucosa. The resulting tool is tested with rhinocytologists. The article discusses the analysis of the results of the conducted evaluation and outlines lessons learned that are relevant for AI in medicine.

Designing a collaborative maintenance planning mechanism between airline and maintenance company using a bilevel model – Considering flexible maintenance schedule and service charges

Periodic aircraft Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) activities are compulsory. To capture the features of MRO operations between airline and maintenance company under MRO outsourcing mode, we consider a collaborative aircraft maintenance planning problem, in which the airline outsources its self-operated maintenance checks to an independent maintenance company. Under such context, MRO planning conflicts between two collaborates exists especially during maintenance peak period, as airline aims to maximize flight operations revenues by receiving timely MRO service. On the other hand, maintenance company strives to accomplish heterogenous demands without causing tardiness and involving excessive MRO resources cost. Therefore, finding an effective mechanism to eliminate the conflicts between maintenance demands (from airline company) and maintenance service supply capability (from maintenance company) is indispensable for collaboration. A bi-level optimization model is formulated to describe the conflicting objectives and maintenance planning features of two independent stakeholders. To facilitates a synchronization of demand and supply and reconcile MRO conflicts, flexible maintenance schedules and service charges decisions from two independent collaborators is involved in the model, enabling a maintenance planning negotiation for finding mutual beneficial maintenance plan. An iterative algorithm deploying bounding updating strategy is developed, which generates a series of convergent-oriented bounding constraints along the iterative negotiation and guides the adjustment of maintenance demand and supply towards equilibrium. Based on the computational results in solving various maintenance planning scenarios, the impacts of different features (e.g. resource availability, resource demands level, and penalty cost of service tardiness) on airline and service company’s planning performance are analysed, revealing that maintenance service company’s own interest can be assured and maintained though it is a follower in the collaboration framework Afterwards, the managerial insights for facilitating the maintenance collaboration are further discussed.

Strengthening collaborative argumentation with interactive guidance: a dialogic peer feedback approach based on the six thinking hats strategy

ABSTRACT Collaborative argumentation supported by argumentation mapping is important for developing college students’ argumentation ability. However, in conventional argumentation mapping-supported collaborative argumentation (AM-CA) activities, learners tend to quickly reach consensus without sufficient discussion and negotiation, or fail to spontaneously assess and integrate the group’s ideas, thus failing to develop more comprehensive and in-depth arguments. Therefore, this study proposed a six thinking hats strategy-based dialogic peer feedback approach to support AM-CA activities, which was expected to support students’ iterative negotiation and deeper interactions through dialogic peer feedback, thus enhancing the quality of argumentation. To show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, this study used a quasi-experimental method to test the proposed strategy in a freshman seminar class at a university. The control group (22 students) used the conventional AM-CA (C-AM-CA) approach, while the experimental group (22 students) used the six thinking hats strategy-based AM-CA (STH-AM-CA) approach. The findings showed that STH-AM-CA improved the quality of argumentation mapping compared to C-AM-CA, but it also significantly increased the learners’ cognitive load. In addition, a thematic inductive qualitative analysis of the interview data demonstrated the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy.

Multi-Stakeholder Decision Support Based on Multicriteria Assessment: Application to Industrial Waste Heat Recovery for a District Heating Network in Grenoble, France

The decarbonization and decentralization of district heating networks lead to the shared use of on-site resources by multiple stakeholders. The optimal design of prospective equipment in such contexts should take into account the preferences and objectives of each stakeholder. This article focuses on the adaptation of a 4E multicriteria model (the criteria being energy, exergy, economic, and exergoeconomic) to include and compare the stakeholders’ performance criteria around the technical design. In addition, two graphical supports are proposed that represent and cross-analyze the different stakeholders’ preferred optima. A preliminary implementation of the methodology is illustrated through a study case in France, which features waste heat recovery for district heating utilization. After presenting the results, a discussion is offered on how to complete the methodology with an iterative negotiation procedure to determine the most suitable design. It was concluded, among other considerations, that the relaxation of the stakeholders’ optimality requirements can greatly enable the project’s feasibility. Such a relaxation could be implemented in the form of a joint consortium. In addition, the results showed that stakeholder relaxations of requirements can lead to new solutions that may outperform the best solutions pre-relaxation. Lastly, perspectives are suggested toward verifying whether relaxed requirements from upstream stakeholders might be more impactful than those of downstream stakeholders.

Locating Migrants Within Informal Workers’ Organizing in India: Has COVID-19 Changed Anything?

There is a rich narrative on the new dynamics of organizing among informal workers wherein citizenship claims rather labour rights become the basis for negotiation. However, putting citizenship claims at the centre puts migrants at a relative disadvantage. Migrants share their vulnerabilities with other informal workers, but they have additional disadvantages rooted in them being ‘non-citizens’. Ironically, migrants are often treated in existing literature as an undifferentiated part of informal labour. Situated in the aftermath of COVID-19, this article locates migrant workers’ vulnerability within their inability to organize as a unique group rather than just as trade-based associations of informal workers. Specifically, the paper asks; what explains the lack of organization among migrant workers? What is the role of trade unions in this regard? And, how has an NGO-led initiative during the outbreak of Covid-19, unfolded opportunities for migrant street vendors to organize? Based on a qualitative study using, primary data from two districts in India, it is found that migrants are occupationally designed to remain de-organized, whereas trade unions represent a case of moral hazard. In fact, part of this disadvantage persists because migrants’ mobilization is yet to figure as a direct agenda of the trade unions. Alongside, a civil society organization, through iterative negotiations initiates a process that, though unintended, can address the citizenship question for migrants. This process mirrors the dynamics of alternative organizing. However, it also signifies that any claims to organize migrant workers must accommodate their distinct positioning within informal workers.

Transactive Control of Electric Railways Using Dynamic Market Mechanisms

Electricity demand of electric railways is a relatively unexplored source of flexibility in demand response applications in power systems. In this article, we propose a transactive control-based optimization framework for coordinating the power grid network and the train network. This is accomplished by coordinating dispatchable distributed energy resources (DERs) and demand profiles of trains using a two-step optimization. A railway-based dynamic market mechanism (rDMM) is proposed for the dispatch of DERs in the power network along the electric railway using an iterative negotiation process, generates the profiles of electricity prices, and constitutes the first step. The train dispatch attempts to minimize the operational costs of trains that ply along the railway, while subject to constraints on their acceleration profiles, route schedules, and the train dynamics, and generate demand profiles of trains and constitute the second step. The rDMM seeks to optimize the operational costs of the underlying DERs while ensuring power balance. Together, they form an overall framework that yields the desired transactions between the railway and power grid infrastructures. This overall optimization approach is validated using simulation studies of the Southbound Amtrak service along the Northeast Corridor (NEC) in USA, which shows a 25% reduction in energy costs when compared to standard trip optimization based on minimum work and a 75% reduction in energy costs when compared to the train cost calculated using a field dataset.

Any-Time Feasible Coordination for Multivehicle Systems

This article proposes a distributed control methodology for the coordination of multiple connected and automated vehicles (CAVs). Each vehicle computes its local trajectory based on a model predictive control (MPC) law and communicates the result with other relevant vehicles. In an iterative negotiation process, planned trajectories are optimized within a sampling time step. Inspired by the Jacobi over-relaxation (JOR) algorithm, we develop a distributed Jacobi over-relaxation algorithm (DJOR) for vehicle coordination. The modified algorithm exploits the structure of the distributed problem setting in which coupling occurs only in a bilateral way. Besides being able to guarantee any-time feasibility that implies collision-freeness, the algorithm scales well, unlike the standard JOR algorithm. The DJOR algorithm allows for significantly less conservatism in the choice of the update weightings. As a result, much faster convergence rates can be expected. Furthermore, the collision avoidance guarantee is extended for unforeseen scenarios such as emergency braking. Using an exact penalty function formulation ensures that the distributed optimization problem remains feasible even in previously unforeseen cases. Numerical simulations of an intersection crossing scenario illustrate the presented approach and show its benefits in comparison with standard traffic rules and a centralized computation.

Stochastic shaping of aggregator energy and reserve bids to ensure network security

Rising market participation of DER through aggregators increases the risk of network constraint violation at the distribution level. Existing approaches to network-secure DER coordination often require centralised resource management/oversight, or involve complex iterative negotiations between prosumers and the distribution service operator (DSO). In response to industry needs for readily-implementable solutions, we propose a straightforward network-secure bid curtailment approach performed by DSOs, allowing for separation of DSO and aggregator roles while factoring aggregator preferences communicated through bids. In extension to previous work, our approach directly maximises expected aggregator benefit in the market by factoring forecast market prices and bid prices into the objective. We mitigate risks of inaccurate market forecasts using a price-probabilistic stochastic program, bringing benefit to within 1% of the perfect information case in our simulations using real data. We demonstrate a 9% improvement in aggregator benefit compared to related approaches, with further gains available through real-reactive power co-optimisation.

Consumer-centric decarbonization framework using Stackelberg game and Blockchain

Energy policy is too often not designed for energy consumers in a low-cost and consumer-friendly manner. This paper proposes a novel Stackelberg game and Blockchain-based framework that enables consumer-centric decarbonization by automating iterative negotiations between policy makers and consumers or generators to reduce carbon emissions. This iterative negotiation is modeled as a Stackelberg game-theoretic problem, and securely facilitated by Blockchain technologies. The policy maker formulates carbon prices and monetary compensation rates to dynamically incentivize the carbon reduction, whereas consumers and generators schedule their power profiles to minimize bills and maximize profits of generation, respectively. The negotiating agreement is yielded by reaching a Stackelberg equilibrium. The exchanged information and controlling functions are realized by using smart contracts of Blockchain technologies. Case studies of GB power systems show that the proposed framework can incentivize 9% more bill savings for consumers and 45.13% more energy generation from renewable energy sources. As a consumer-centric decarbonization framework, it can at least reduce carbon emissions by 40%.

Decision Making on Government Subsidy for Highway Public-Private Partnership Projects in China Using an Iteration Game Model

Government subsidy is an important responsibility of fiscal expenditure in public-private partnership (PPP) projects. However, an improper subsidy strategy may cause over-compensation or under-compensation. In this research, an iteration game model combining game theory and real option is established to describe the periodic decision-making process. The strategy game model is applied to characterize the behavioral interactions between stakeholders, and the real option theory is used to predict the project performance under the influence of their decisions. Besides, two new indicators, the efficiency of fund (SE) and the total extra cost paid by the private sector (ME), are proposed to evaluate the extra project revenue caused by each unit of the subsidy and the incentive effects of the subsidy. Consequently, the preliminary results indicate that a periodic and iterative negotiations regarding the subsidy will effectively improve the efficiency of fund compared to the traditional way. The results also show that it is important for the public sector to give incentives, encouraging the private sector to make more efforts on the project, rather than merely providing fund support. Further study will focus on more detailed and complicated behaviors of stakeholders based on the model proposed in this paper.

Decentralized privacy-preserving onboard mission planning for multi-probe system

Complex deep-space missions containing several tasks are beyond the capacity of a single probe and require multi-probe cooperation. Such missions need onboard planning to avoid communication delays caused by the long distance between the probes and the Earth. However, the traditional centralized planning approaches will burden the manager probe with a high computing load and make the system liable to a single-point failure. A decentralized onboard planning system based on privacy-preserving multi-agent negotiation is proposed to address this problem. The Privacy-preserving Decentralized Multi-Agent Mission Planning Frame (PDMA-MPF) is designed, in which the concepts of private agent and public agent are proposed for the first time. Based on the planning frame, the Decentralized Multi-Agent Iterative Negotiation Task Allocation Method (DMAIN) is developed to allocate tasks and generate local plans for probes. The method uses a deferred-acceptance negotiation pattern, considering the mission profit and load balancing of probes. An information consistency mechanism is designed for the public data synchronization of planners. The local planning of probes is modeled as a constraint satisfaction problem with profit optimization. A temporal constraint handling algorithm and a Resource Rate Timeline (RRTL) based resource constraint handling algorithm are proposed to satisfy constraints in a profit optimized way. The planning system verification shows that the proposed system can generate reasonable plans and guarantee public data consistency between planners. The simulation results illustrate that the proposed planning system gets higher mission profits and a more balanced workload of probes, as compared with the traditional Hierarchical Greedy Algorithm.

Russian speakers and ‘The Russian Language’ in Ireland: unity, hybridity, standard and variation

ABSTRACT This article examines how Russian speakers in Ireland delimit and describe (their/the) Russian language in relation to representations of standard Russian. It is based on analysis of discussions conducted between speakers of Russian living in Ireland, facilitated by the Our Languages (2008–2011) research project, investigating multilingualism and sociolinguistic dispositions amid Ireland’s Russian-speaking population. Three metalinguistic orientations are foregrounded: (1) participants affirm the naturally and normatively discrete identity of ‘the’ Russian language; (2) despite this unitary identity, participants distinguish between registers and levels of relative purity in Russian; (3) participants relate generalised linguistic form to a concept of community. The interplay of these orientations – toward an essentially unitary and unifying Russian language, away from ‘improper’ forms of that language, and into reflection on collective identity – reveals a model culture of standard language within the polyglossic context of Irish society, combining the routinely claimed characteristics of generality and authenticity. The article interprets the contradictory dynamic between these characteristics in relation to a Bakhtinian concept of monolingualism and a critical conceptualisation of language community. Participants configure Russian as one among ‘our languages’ through the iterative negotiation of a tension between ideological monolingualism and actual heteroglossia.

Negotiated Reporting and Auditor Size

The extant literature views audited financial reports resulting from client-management proposing a report and an auditor issuing an opinion on the report. But the literature finds that this process is a negotiation that is an iterative process between the auditor and client-management. This auditor-client-management (ACM) literature relies on the early research of Antle and Nalebuff (1991) and Zhang (1999) for theoretical guidance, but both studies assume negotiation is a take-it-or-leave-it offer, and not an iterative process. Given the misalignment between the ACM literature and theoretical guidance, we address the ACM relationship by constructing a model that reflects the iterative negotiation process and addresses the role of auditor size in the cost of the audit and the accuracy of the audited report. Our results on auditor size differ, however, when negotiation is modeled as a take-it-or-leave-it offer, thus highlighting the need for theoretical guidance that aligns with the ACM literature’s findings.

A methodology for creating sustainable communities based on dynamic factors in virtual environments

A virtual community is one of communities that exist in an internet economy; however, little research has been conducted on how to make it sustainable. We propose a methodology for creating sustainable virtual communities which depends on the community's respond to the dynamic factors in its environment such as number of members, shared contents and interaction rules. The methodology proposes the use of iterative negotiation and a panel of expert agents to assess the quality of service (QoS) delivered. This QoS assessment is based on an interaction agreement between the community members and expert agent as the administrator's representative. The administrators use this QoS assessment to determine whether an individual's membership will be renewed or terminated after a certain period of time. We present a metric to measure the sustainability index and demonstrate the validity of the methodology by engineering a prototype setup and running simulations under various operational conditions.

A methodology for creating sustainable communities based on dynamic factors in virtual environments

A virtual community is one of communities that exist in an internet economy; however, little research has been conducted on how to make it sustainable. We propose a methodology for creating sustainable virtual communities which depends on the community's respond to the dynamic factors in its environment such as number of members, shared contents and interaction rules. The methodology proposes the use of iterative negotiation and a panel of expert agents to assess the quality of service (QoS) delivered. This QoS assessment is based on an interaction agreement between the community members and expert agent as the administrator's representative. The administrators use this QoS assessment to determine whether an individual's membership will be renewed or terminated after a certain period of time. We present a metric to measure the sustainability index and demonstrate the validity of the methodology by engineering a prototype setup and running simulations under various operational conditions.

City Data Plan: The Conceptualisation of a Policy Instrument for Data Governance in Smart Cities

This paper presents the conceptualisation of the City Data Plan, a data governance policy instrument intended to connect the production and use of urban data in a comprehensive and evolutive long-term strategy aligned with city development goals. The concept of the City Data Plan had been elaborated by taking into account current issues related to privacy and manipulation of data in smart city. The methodological approach adopted to define the nature of a City Data Plan is grounded on the conceptual and empirical parallelism with corporate data governance plans and general urban plans, respectively aimed to regulate decision-making powers and actions on data in enterprise contexts, and the interests of local stakeholders in the access and use of urban resources. The result of this analytic process is the formulation of the outline of a City Data Plan as a data governance policy instrument to support the iterative negotiation between the instances of data producers and data users for instantiating shared smart city visions. The conceptualisation of the City Data Plan includes a description of the multi-stakeholder organisational structures for the city data governance, cooperation protocols and decision areas, responsibilities assignments, components of the plan and its implementation mechanisms.

Institutionalising emergent organisation in health and social care

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to argue for the institutionalisation of emergent forms of organisation in health and social care and offer a conceptual framework for this purpose.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on ethnographic research on the organising work of nurses and Translational Mobilisation Theory, this paper extends two classic Straussian sociological concepts – illness trajectory and articulation work – to conceptualise emergent organisation as Care Trajectory Management.FindingsFailures of coordination are well-recognised threats to quality and safety and recent decades have witnessed an explosion of neoliberal technologies and governance arrangements designed to “measure and manage” these risks. Yet in a significant and growing proportion of health and social care provision successful service integration depends not on rational planning, but iterative negotiations and adjustments in response to contingencies. While ubiquitous in health and social care systems, these emergent forms of organisation lack legitimacy, the work involved is relatively invisible and practice is poorly served by prevailing management discourses.Originality/valueThe Care Trajectory Management Framework provides an alternative discourse and logic on which to develop strategies and technologies to support emergent organisational processes in acute and community care contexts.

Localisation and cross-border assistance to deliver humanitarian health services in North-West Syria: a qualitative inquiry for The Lancet-AUB Commission on Syria

BackgroundIn a growing number of humanitarian crises, “remote management” is negotiated across borders and implemented by humanitarian agencies through “local actors” to deliver assistance. However, the narrative describing the involvement of local actors in the delivery of humanitarian aid in armed conflict settings remains reductionist and unreflective of the complex and circular course of the “localisation of aid”. This paper explores cross-border humanitarian assistance within the Syrian conflict. We document how humanitarian actors operate to deliver humanitarian health care in North-West Syria (Turkish border), explore their challenges and critique the language used within current debates on the localisation of aid.MethodsWe undertook key informant interviews with Turkey-based humanitarian aid professionals involved in the humanitarian health response inside Syria. We integrated data previously collected for The Lancet-American University of Beirut Commission on Syria during field work in Gaziantep, Turkey, through meetings, conversations, discussions and expert consultations with Syrian health professionals, WHO-Turkey staff members and members of Syrian health directorates. We also drew from background desk reviews conducted by the Commission on health systems responses and timeline of events in Turkey during the Syrian conflict.ResultsThis paper uncovers creative and effective bottom-up strategies that enhanced cross-border coordination of aid delivery into Syria. Our findings unravel the key role played by Syrian providers in accessing vulnerable populations and in reshaping coordination and funding mechanisms inside Syria, as well as the disproportionate risks local actors bear within the response. Our findings also reveal an iterative negotiation of decision-making dynamics, a “low-profile approach” promoted to gain access to populations of concerns, and an environment that is heavily shaped by close interpersonal relationships and social trust.ConclusionsOur multifaceted narrative unpacks circular flows of interactions among actors and uncovers strategies developed by practitioners on the field, which are often left undocumented. We argue that there is an opportunity for the humanitarian sector to learn from these synergies to rethink how medical humanitarianism is framed (hopefully leading to a more collaborative framing that resists mainstreaming “local” actors within a “traditional” system). There is also an opportunity for the humanitarian and global health communities to reflect on how value attributed to human lives needs to be questioned in contexts where national staff face a disproportionate risk to deliver aid.

The seeing place: Talking theatre and medicine

A Professor of Medical Ethics and a theatre director, also mother and daughter, talk about health, illness, suffering, performance and practice. Using the lenses of ethical and performance theory, they explore what it means to be a patient, a spectator and a practitioner and cover many plays, texts and productions: Samuel Beckett’s Not I and All That Fall, Sarah Kane’s Crave, Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree, Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk, Annie Ryan’s adaptation of Eimear McBride’s novel A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, Duncan MacMillan’s People, Place and Things and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. These were selected because first we have seen, studied or worked with each and they have continued to inspire us. Second, they offer rich and revealing insights into the ways in which meaning(s) is/are both negotiated and contested in relation to health and illness. It is the iterative negotiation of meaning(s) that, it is argued, is the essence of narrative practice, be it in medicine or in the theatre. The difference and divergence of perception, response and interpretation to dramatic performance can test relationships, be they professional, creative or familial. Yet, the capacity to understand, and embrace, disagreement and uncertainty is vital; fundamental to a flourishing life. For it is by recognising our part in creating narratives, broken and otherwise, that we can begin to recognise the necessary interactionism and humanity of both medicine and theatre.

Intersection Crossing of Cooperative Multi-vessel Systems

A Cooperative Multi-Vessel System (CMVS) is a system consisting of multiple coordinated vessels. Vessels utilize Vessel-2-Vessel and Vessel-2-Infrastructure communication to making decisions with negotiating and\\or collaborating with each other for a common goal. Due to the geographic limitations of banks and navigation rules and regulations, in straight waterways, the cooperation of vessels usually results in train-like formations. This behavior is similar to the highway platooning of vehicles. A particular challenge arises when such platoons have to cross waterway intersections. At the intersections, the vessel trains need to interact with others. However, research on the interaction between vehicle platoons is still lacking.This paper focuses on the cooperation of vessels at waterway intersections. We propose a framework for cooperative scheduling and control of CMVSs at intersections. The actions of the vessels are determined by solving two problems: Waterway Intersection Scheduling (WIS) and Vessel Train Formation (VTF). Firstly, the process of the vessels passing through an intersection is regarded as consumption of space and time. The WIS helps to find a conflict-free schedule for the vessels from different directions. By solving the WIS problem, each vessel’s desired time of arrival can be determined. Then, the actions of vessels are determined using a distributed Model Predictive Control algorithm in the VTF problem. Agreement among the vessels is achieved via serial iterative negotiations. Simulation experiments are carried out to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework. We compare the passing time of each vessel, and the total passing time in three scenarios: non-cooperative case, partially-cooperative case, and fully-cooperative case. With the proposed cooperative framework, vessels can have smoother trajectories. The total passing time and the passing time for each vessel also benefit from the cooperation. Besides, the proposed framework can be extended to the whole waterway network where other infrastructure (bridges and locks) exists.