A novel two-level hierarchical graph model is developed to analyze international climate change negotiations with hierarchical structures: the negotiations take place between two nations and between each nation and its provincial governments. The two national government are two decision makers at the top level. Within each nation, the two provincial governments negotiate with the national government at the lower level. The theoretical structure of this novel model, including decision makers, options, moves, and preference relations, are developed. The interrelationship between the stabilities in the two-level hierarchical graph model and the stabilities in local models are investigated by theorems. These theorems can be utilized to calculate complete stabilities in the two-level hierarchical graph model when the stabilities in local graph models are known. The international climate change negotiations as the illustrative example is then investigated in detail. The extra equilibrium, uniquely obtained by this novel methodology, suggests that opposition may still be from one provincial government when the national government does not sign the international climate agreement and implements existing environmental laws. Compared with other approaches, this novel methodology is an effective and flexible tool in analyzing hierarchical conflicts at two levels by providing decision makers with strategic resolutions with broader vision.

In this paper, we study a supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a value-adding retailer that sell a product to customers through dual channels, i.e. a traditional channel (TC) and an online channel (OC). Observing that in practice, the manufacturer may or may not offer an OC guide price to the retailer and/or act as the leader in the supply chain, we discuss and compare two practical pricing strategies, with and without an OC guide price, under two different power configurations based on which member of the supply chain acts as the leader. Our results show that if the manufacturer does not provide a guide price, the retailer might/might not set a higher TC price than the two OC prices, depending on the level of migration effectiveness and the potential market demand. However, if the manufacturer does provide a guide price, the retailer will always charge a higher TC price than the guide price (or the two OC prices) when the retailer acts as the leader. Moreover, we show that the two players in the supply chain might or might not prefer the pricing strategies with an OC guide price. Our results also indicate that migration effectiveness harms the retailer’s profit, and the manufacturer may benefit from mild competition between the two channels. Finally, we show that regardless of whether the manufacturer chooses to offer an OC guide price or not, both the manufacturer and the retailer prefer to act as the follower for high migration effectiveness and the profit of the supply chain will increase when the retailer acts as the leader (for low migration effectiveness.

This paper introduces the background and purpose of the International Society for Knowledge and Systems Sciences and considers new developments in systems science in the knowledge society. First, in connection with the reason why the name of the society includes knowledge and systems, this paper argues that it is important to support each other for the development of both systems science and knowledge science. Next, this paper introduces three approaches that have tried to combine systems thinking and knowledge management in this academic society. They are Knowledge Systems Engineering, Informed Systems Approach, and Knowledge Construction Systems Methodology. This paper suggests newdevelopments in systems science and engineering that incorporate the concept of knowledge management through explanations of these significances.

The concept of individual knowledge system (IKS) is defined from the perspective of system science. To begin with, the present paper elaborates the characteristics of IKS. Then a six-space pattern of information and knowledge for IKS is created to describe and organize knowledge, providing a computation model to analyse things. Finally, an example of stability analysis in industrial economic system is used to illustrate the feasibility and validity of IKS.

Efficient tuning of the coefficients used by proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers enhances their performance. For highly non-linear systems, optimization algorithms are required to make the PID controllers more responsive to disturbances. The production of tert-amyl-methyl-ether (TAME), an essential additive for gasoline, in reactive distillation columns integrates highly non-linear reaction and separation processes. On the other hand, TAME distillation is an azeotrope distillation process, therefore non-linearity of this process is more complex than that of conventional distillation. PID-controller tuning methods applying a genetic algorithm (GA) and a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm are compared using a dynamic simulation that integrates the optimization algorithms with the HYSYS process simulator. The PID controller response trends are analyzed following the introduction of a significant disturbance to the TAME reactive distillation column (i.e., a ten percent change in the methanol feed temperature). The PSO PID controller tuning method that minimizes the integral of the absolute error (IAE) as its objective function significantly outperforms the GA tuning method. The novel PID-tuning methodology developed has more extensive application potential.

The government subsidy plays an important role in the recycling and remanufacturing process of a closed-loop supply chain. This paper focuses on the impacts of different patterns of government subsidy on the chain members’ profits and the environment. Furthermore, we develop three models in a supply chain including a manufacturer, a retailer and a collector, namely (1) the government invests public service advertisement to stimulate the remanufacturing process (Model AS); (2) the government offers only monetary subsidy to the collector (Model MS); (3) the government allocates the subsidy into two parts, namely both advertisement and monetary subsidy (Model HS). We find that, no matter which subsidy pattern the government adopts, both the manufacturer and the collector are beneficiaries of the government subsidy, and that such subsidizing activity is definitely conducive to the environmental sustainability. Taking into account the chain members’ profits and the environmental impact, the optimal hybrid subsidy scheme (Model HS) is more beneficial than that in both Model MS and Model AS, which can be attributed to the combination of the incentives provided by the public service advertisement and the price attraction by the monetary subsidy. We also find that, for single advertisement and monetary subsidy, the amount of government subsidy will decide their merits and demerits. The direct monetary subsidy in Model MS will have a greater influence regarding to the supply quantity of used products than the mere advertisement subsidy in Model AS when the subsidy is relatively large.

Disaster relief logistics is a significant element in the management of disaster relief operations. In this paper, the operational decisions of relief logistics are considered in the distribution of resources to the affected areas to include scheduling, routing, and allocation decisions. The proposed mathematical model simultaneously captures many aspects relevant to real life to face the challenging situation of disasters. Characteristics such as multiple uses of vehicles and split delivery allow for better use of vehicles as one of the primary resources of disaster response. A multi-period multi-criteria mixed-integer programming model is introduced to evaluate and address these features. The model utilizes a rolling horizon method that provides possibilities to adjust plans as more information becomes available. Three objectives of efficiency, effectiveness, and equity are jointly considered. The augmented epsilon constraint method is applied to solve the model, and a case study is presented to illustrate the potential applicability of our model. Computational results show that the model is capable of generating efficient solutions.