Energy plays a vital role in the world today, driving industry and allowing for technologies ingrained throughout the routines of daily life. The complex interactions, evolution, long time scales of change, and critical nature of the energy system makes modeling and analysis crucial to...

Cost-of-service is the typical regulatory scheme used for natural gas local distribution companies (LDCs). The profit of a regulated LDC is a return on investment, based on the capital she owns. The cost paid by consumers is, in general, equal to the cost incurred by the LDC for gas procurement...

The State Utility Forecasting Group (SUFG) at Purdue University utilizes econometric and end-use models to develop forecasts of electricity prices and demand on a timely basis for the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, in compliance with Indiana Code 8-1-8.5. As part of this procedure, SUFG...

This study develops a decision-making framework for large combined sewer management to assist asset managers in decision-making regarding sewer maintenance and rehabilitation plans under constraints of limited access to sewer condition data. Traditionally, municipalities have addressed this...

In managing economic risks, it is necessary for a company in the process industries to allow for uncertainties in the amount of each product that can be sold, how much material is available for production, as well as prices and costs. The goal is to optimize a company's profit criterion without...

Uncertain electricity load variation could incur additional costs associated with some specific decisions to resolve its impacts. Price volatility also becomes one of the major concerns for the operation planning and scheduling problem, resulted from the emergence of electricity markets. Since...

In this dissertation, we consider an inventory sharing and rationing problem in continuous-review, infinite-horizon, distribution networks. Unlike previous literature on inventory sharing, we model inventory sharing as a multiple demand classes problem in which each dealer faces two classes of...

In this dissertation, two research topics are investigated: the demand information asymmetry in a decentralized inventory sharing supply chain and the quality-based supplier selection. For the first research topic, previous literature on inventory sharing has assumed that retailers' demand...

We propose a reliability growth model that incorporates data from multiple stages of testing and acknowledges fixes implemented at the end of each stage. Competitive pressure and governmental regulations compress the time that can be devoted to product development. Limitations on budgets for...

Distribution centers and warehouses are becoming more and more dependent on advanced computer technologies to establish and maintain competitiveness in a global economy. Neural network represent a new technology with a wide scope of potential warehouses applications, ranging from planning and...