HICSS-38
COMPLEX SYSTEMS TRACK


Chair: Prof. Robert J. Thomas
School of Electrical Engineering
428 Phillips Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
(607) 255-5083 (office)
(607) 255-8871 (fax)
rjt1@cornell.edu


This track seeks to explore methods at the frontier of understanding complex system phenomena.  Of special interest is the use of the electric power systems as a context for this exploration.  For HICSS-38 we would like to have four minitracks covering 8 sessions in two days. 

Minitracks:
 
Information and Data Management and Analysis for Large Systems (Thomas J. Overbye)
Market Designs and Infrastructure Investments (Richard E. Schuler )
Robust And Resilient Critical Infrastructure Systems (Jagdish Chandra)
Security and Reliability of Complex Systems (Peter W. Sauer)
 

Information and Data Management and Analysis for Large Systems

Minitrack Chair
Thomas J. Overbye
Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Illinois
1406 W. Green Street
Urbana, IL  61801
Phone: 217-333-4463
Fax:      217-333-1162
Email:
overbye@ece.uiuc.edu


Managing the operation of large, networked systems is becoming increasingly complex.  Often, critical information about the system is getting lost in a tidal wave of data.  A particularly germane example is the electric power grid, as evidenced by the problems experienced in the August 14th 2003 blackout.  One of the key causes of the blackout was the people operating the system in various regions through the eastern part of North America did not have access to the “big picture.”  The focus of this mini-track is on the management, analysis, and visualization of systems characterized by extremely large sets of data that cover spatial, temporal and contingent dimensions.  Papers should focus on techniques for extracting information from such large data sets.   

This minitrack will consist of two sessions titled as follows: 

1)     Data Structures and Mining
      Session Chair: Stephen McArthur, University of Strathclyde

2)
     Visualization and Management of Information
    Session Chair: Tom Overbye, University of Illinois

back to top icon back to top

Market Designs and Infrastructure Investments

Minitrack Chair
Richard E. Schuler
Dept. of  Civil and Environmental Engineering
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607-255-7579
Fax: 607-255-2818
Email:
res1@cornell.edu

Structuring efficient markets for electricity that facilitate both operating reliability and needed system expansion is an evolving art, as evidenced by the sequence of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proceedings that weigh standardization  with continued flexibility and improvements in market design. Traditional analytic methods have been only partially successful in fashioning improvements, since system parameters routinely become choice variables in the interplay between buyers, sellers, operators and market overseers. Thus analytic, statistical, numerical and game-theoretic tools all have relevance.

This minitrack will consist of two sessions titled as follows:

        1)     Infrastructure Investments
                       
Session Chair: Fernando Alvarado, University of Wisconsin at Madison
       
2)     Operations and Market Design
                        Session Chair: Richard Tabors, TCA, Cambridge,MA

back to top icon back to top

Robust And Resilient Critical Infrastructure Systems
Minitrack Chair
Jagdish Chandra
The George Washington University
Columbia College of Arts and Science
1776 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
Tel: (202) 994-0179
Fax: (202) 994-4606
Email: jchandra@seas.gwu.edu


Critical infrastructures such as transportation systems, power grids, communication networks, water resources, and financial networks are the backbone of a nation’s security and its vibrant economy.  Reliable performance and protection of such systems thus is of paramount importance. These generally interdependent systems, however, are not merely physical entities and informational networks; they involve in a critical way social structures such as institutions and people necessary to deliver these services. Because of this, the challenge of ensuring the availability and reliability of vital services in the face of a broad range of hazards and operating conditions is more complicated than just the protection of physical assets. To address these challenges, we focus in this minitrack on two vital - but interrelated - aspects of this grand challenge, namely, socio-technical aspects of complex systems in general, and resulting risk analysis and management in such interdependent infrastructure systems.

This minitrack will consist of two sessions titled as follows:

        1)       Socio-technical Aspects of Complex Systems
                    Session Chair: Richard Little, National Research Council, Washington, DC
Civil infrastructures are inherently interconnected and have been shown to be particularly vulnerable to cascading-type failures from a single event or the secondary and tertiary failure effects of these systems on each other.  These complex, interdependent events are as often the result of social and organizational breakdowns as they are of technological failure.  Therefore, a complete understanding of these events requires an approach that holistically integrates their technical and social aspects and the impacts of complex system failures on our social, economic, and political institutions.  This session is aimed at identifying simulation tools such as agent-based models and other methods that can be used to improve our ability to predict how socio-technological systems will behave when stressed; evaluating techniques such as fat-tailed distributions for generating synthetic data sets that can be used to analyze low frequency but high consequence events; and to open a dialog on interdisciplinary approaches to addressing complex system failures and the means to mitigate their effects.

        2)       Risk Analysis and Critical Infrastructure Systems
                 
Session Chair: William A. Wallace, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
Risk is exposure to a chance of injury or loss. Analyzing risks means addressing questions concerned with assessing the risk, managing its occurrence and consequences, and communicating with the public. Chance or uncertainty is the fundamental component of risk. It is basic to the analysis because one cannot be certain about the values of the important characteristics and variables, and is often unsure about the scientific processes that describe their relationships. The focus of the proposed session is on decision technologies that can be used either to mitigate against or respond to events that have the capability of major disruption to critical infrastructure systems – either shutting down a service or using the infrastructure to cause harm to other infrastructures or the population at large. The session will focus on those decision methodologies and tools that incorporate risk in their development and application.

back to top icon back to top

Security and Reliability of Complex Systems

Minitrack Chair
Peter W. Sauer
Dept. of  Electrical & Computer Engineering
University of Illinois
1406 W. Green St.
Urbana, IL 61801
Tel: 217-333-0394
Fax: 217-333-1162
Email:
sauer@ece.uiuc.edu

This mini-track focuses on topics related to the ability of complex systems such as power systems to survive disturbances with minimal impact on performance.  Specific topics include:

This minitrack will consist of two sessions titled as follows:

       1)  Modeling and Simulation of Complex Networks
             Session Chair: Peter W. Sauer, University of Illinois

2)     State Estimation and other Operations Software and Algorithms: 
Session Chair: Sakis Meliopolous, Georgia Tech

back to top icon back to top


  RETURN TO LIST OF TRACKS

Send questions or comments to: hicss@hawaii.edu