Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories

The development and application of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) and other metaheuristics for the optimisation of water resources systems has been an active research field for over two decades. Research to date has emphasized algorithmic improvements and individual applications in specific areas (e.g. model calibration, water distribution systems, groundwater management, river-basin planning and management, etc.). However, there has been limited synthesis between shared problem traits, common EA challenges, and needed advances across major applications. This paper clarifies the current status and future research directions for better solving key water resources problems using EAs. Advances in understanding fitness landscape properties and their effects on algorithm performance are critical. Future EA-based applications to real-world problems require a fundamental shift of focus towards improving problem formulations, understanding general theoretic frameworks for problem decompositions, major advances in EA computational efficiency, and most importantly aiding real decision-making in complex, uncertain application contexts.

/pdf/evolutionary-algorithms-and-other-metaheuristics-in-water-395cpaoum8.pdf

Evolutionary algorithms and other metaheuristics in water resources

Wiebe E Bijker, Thomas P Hughes and Trevor Pinch (eds) 1987 London: MIT x + 405 pp price £29.95 ISBN 0 262 02262 1 Science and technology have come under scrutiny from several social science perspectives. Historians, philosophers, economists and sociologists have all made their contribution.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9112/39/8/019/pdf

The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology

This paper introduces many objective robust decision making (MORDM). MORDM combines concepts and methods from many objective evolutionary optimization and robust decision making (RDM), along with extensive use of interactive visual analytics, to facilitate the management of complex environmental systems. Many objective evolutionary search is used to generate alternatives for complex planning problems, enabling the discovery of the key tradeoffs among planning objectives. RDM then determines the robustness of planning alternatives to deeply uncertain future conditions and facilitates decision makers' selection of promising candidate solutions. MORDM tests each solution under the ensemble of future extreme states of the world (SOW). Interactive visual analytics are used to explore whether solutions of interest are robust to a wide range of plausible future conditions (i.e., assessment of their Pareto satisficing behavior in alternative SOW). Scenario discovery methods that use statistical data mining algorithms are then used to identify what assumptions and system conditions strongly influence the cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability of the robust alternatives. The framework is demonstrated using a case study that examines a single city's water supply in the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV) in Texas, USA. Results suggest that including robustness as a decision criterion can dramatically change the formulation of complex environmental management problems as well as the negotiated selection of candidate alternatives to implement. MORDM also allows decision makers to characterize the most important vulnerabilities for their systems, which should be the focus of ex post monitoring and identification of triggers for adaptive management.

Many objective robust decision making for complex environmental systems undergoing change

Many Objective Robust Decision Making for Complex Environmental Systems Undergoing Change

The conceptualisation of the notion of a system in systems engineering, as exemplified in, for instance, the engineering standard IEEE Std 1220–1998 (1999), is problematic when applied to the design of socio-technical systems. This is argued using Intelligent Transportation Systems as an example. A preliminary conceptualisation of socio-technical systems is introduced which includes technical and social elements and actors, as well as four kinds of relations. Current systems engineering practice incorporates technical elements and actors in the system but sees social elements exclusively as contextual. When designing socio-technical systems, however, social elements and the corresponding relations must also be considered as belonging to the system.

Modelling infrastructures as socio-technical systems

Systems engineering has been plagued by the problem of how to separate a system from its environment or context, in particular from its social context. We propose to include anything in the system that is necessary for performing its intended function and that may be the object of design. For certain engineering systems, such as civil aviation systems, this implies that human agents and social institutions have to be taken as integral parts of these systems. These ‘socio-technical’ systems are of a hybrid nature because they are constituted by different kinds of elements, intentional and nonintentional: social institutions, human agents and technical artefacts. This paper analyses two different roles that human agents, as elements of socio-technical systems, may play with regard to technical artefacts. Furthermore, it discusses some conceptual problems concerning the modelling of socio-technical systems that are due to the hybrid nature of these systems.

/pdf/treating-socio-technical-systems-as-engineering-systems-some-wwzpourqdn.pdf

Treating socio-technical systems as engineering systems: some conceptual problems

Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence (Eds) Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007 xii + 358 pp., ISBN 9780199250981, £63.00, US$120.00 (hardback); ISBN 9780199250998, £25.00, US$49.95 (paperback) The ha...

Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representation

Arrow’s theorem poses limits to the translation of the different preference orders on a set of options into a single preference order. In this paper, I argue, against opinions to the contrary, that Arrow’s theorem applies fully to multi-criteria decision problems as they occur in engineering design, making solution methods to such problems subject to the theorem’s negative result. Discussing the meaning and consequences for engineering design, I review the solution methods to such problems presented in the engineering design literature in the light of the theorem. It appears that underlying such methods is a mix-up of two fundamentally different problem definitions, as the theory of multi-attribute preferences, which is often presented as an adequate approach for engineering design, in fact fails to address the Arrowian multi-criteria problem. Finally, I suggest ways how engineering design might adopt results from discussions of Arrow’s theorem elsewhere in resolving its multi-criteria decision problems.

Arrow’s theorem, multi-criteria decision problems and multi-attribute preferences in engineering design

In A Philosophy of Technology: From Technical Artefacts to Sociotechnical Systems, technology is analysed from a series of different perspectives. The analysis starts by focussing on the most tangible products of technology, called technical artefacts, and then builds step-wise towards considering those artefacts within their context of use, and ultimately as embedded in encompassing sociotechnical systems that also include humans as operators and social rules like legislation. Philosophical characterisations are given of technical artefacts, their context of use and of sociotechnical systems. Analyses are presented of how technical artefacts are designed in engineering and what types of technological knowledge is involved in engineering. And the issue is considered how engineers and others can or cannot influence the development of technology. These characterisations are complemented by ethical analyses of the moral status of technical artefacts and the possibilities and impossibilities for engineers to influence this status when designing artefacts and the sociotechnical systems in which artefacts are embedded. The running example in the book is aviation, where aeroplanes are examples of technical artefacts and the world aviation system is an example of a sociotechnical system. Issues related to the design of quiet aeroplane engines and the causes of aviation accidents are analysed for illustrating the moral status of designing, and the role of engineers therein.

Maarten Franssen

Papers

Modelling infrastructures as socio-technical systems

Treating socio-technical systems as engineering systems: some conceptual problems

Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representation

Arrow’s theorem, multi-criteria decision problems and multi-attribute preferences in engineering design

A Philosophy of Technology: From Technical Artefacts to Sociotechnical Systems