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
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
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
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
RETURN TO LIST OF
TRACKS
Send questions or comments to: hicss@hawaii.edu