In this article, we describe simulation-based decision support techniques for evaluation of operational plans within effects-based planning. Using a decision support tool, developers of operational plans are able to evaluate thousands of alternative plans against possible courses of events and...

Faculty Advisor: David Skidmore, Professor Department of Politics and International Relations, College of Arts and Sciences Drake University. Student editorial board for the Spring 2006 issue include: Teresa Abbey, Brittany Buchholz, Brett Myrick and Jeff Scheiber.

A significant problem in the area of stock selection is that of identifying the factors that affect a security’s return. While modern portfolio theory suggests a linear multi-factor model in the form of Arbitrage Pricing Theory it does not suggest the identity, or even the number, of risk...

A look at today's US military will see them operating much beyond the scope of protecting and defending the United States. These operations now consist of, but are not limited to humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and conflict resolution. This broad spectrum of operational environments has...

Despite their success and widespread usage in industry and business, ES methods have received little attention from the statistical community. We investigate three types of statistical models that have been found to underpin ES methods. They are ARIMA models, state space models with multiple...

This dissertation deals with three problems in health care. In the first, we consider the incentives to change prices and capital levels at hospitals, using optimal control under the assumption that private payers charge higher prices if patients consume more hospital services. The main results...

This thesis is concerned with simulation output analysis. In particular, we are inter-ested in estimating the variance parameter of a steady-state output process. The estimationof the variance parameter has immediate applications in problems involving (i) the precisionof the sample mean as a...

Maritime transportation plays a leading role in the movement and minimization of transportation costs of goods between regions. One of the major challenges faced by port managers/operators is the growing number of containers or ship traffic which can affect the port container terminal...

Recent literature contains many examples of reputation systems which are constructed in anad hoc way or rely upon some heuristic which has been found to be useful. However,comparisons between these reputation systems has been impossible because there are noestablished methods of comparing...

Economic scheduling needs to be considered for Grid computing environment, because it gives an incentive for resource providers to supply their resources. Moreover, it enforces efficient use of resources, because the users have to pay for theiruse. Tendering is a suitable model for Grid...