Minimal Resource Cost Research Articles

A scheduling method with search space reduction

In this paper, we propose a time-constrained scheduling approach to minimize resource cost. Most previous approaches cannot estimate resource costs completely in the initial scheduling process, because most operations have not been assigned yet. Therefore, our approach eliminates the operation and control step pair with the maximum resource cost. In order to minimize total resource cost, we also estimate the resource cost of functional units, registers, and buses based on the distribution of operations. © 1999 Scripta Technica, Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 82(1): 34–42, 1999

Methodology for Optimal Plant Growth Strategies in Life-Support Systems

A controlled ecological life-support system (CELSS) combines the photosynthetic activity of plants with physico-chemical processes to regenerate waste material into food and oxygen. The sustainability of such a semiclosed system requires that a controller making strategy decisions has a variety of mass flow options from which to choose. A methodology is developed to determine plant growth strategies for CELSS candidate species. Strategy decisions include the desired biomass at the time of harvest, the proportion of inedible biomass hydrolyzed to sugar and used as a food source, and the amount of phosphorous in the plant nutrient stream. These studies suggest ways in which optimization can be used to increase understanding and establish design criteria. A Monte Carlo simulation technique is combined with a nonlinear simplex optimization algorithm to find a range of strategies producing acceptable diets while minimizing resource cost. Whereas random guessing of potential strategies produced only 53 solution...

Cost-Effective Enforcement Of Environmental Standards

The body of information presented in this paper is directed to those individuals concerned with cost-effective enforcement of environmental standards. Its aim is twofold. One is to determine some of the differing impacts upon firm behavior of legal enforcement, of economic incentive enforcement, and of mixed legal-economic enforcement. A second objective is to initiate identification of enforcement systems which are most likely to minimize resource costs to firms and enforcement agencies of meeting environmental standards. A computerized model is used to simulate enforcement of the new source particu-late matter discharge standard for coal-fired power plants. Under current legal enforcement it is found that most plants will violate the standard, that small plants will control to higher removal levels than large plants and that firms will install relatively costly pollution control technology. Three enforcement alternatives are considered for overcoming these shortcomings: more stringent legal enforcement,...