Red blood cells (RBCs) are the most commonly used blood product. A body of literature is available to both support and oppose the concept that patient outcomes are negatively impacted when older blood is transfused. This has led to further research to analyze the impacts of reducing the shelf life of RBCs through the lenses of wastage and cost, and most importantly, sufficiency of supply. In this study, we look at the implications of decreasing the shelf life of RBCs in the state of New South Wales (NSW). We develop a discrete-event simulation model that considers the complexities of a two-echelon inventory system, as characterized by the blood product supply chain in Australia. The results show that reducing the shelf life of RBCs would, as we expect, result in fresher blood being transfused to patients. However, a reduction of 21 days would not be tolerated by that system based on current policy and practices; would result in a loss of control, vastly increased shortages, and (or) outdated RBCs; and would result in greater risk to patient care. Our model also evaluates the impact of operational policies on the NSW blood supply chain. The electronic companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.2017.0899 .

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Overall performance of a peer-to-peer system can be highly variable and unpredictable as there is no central authority to set and coordinate the amount of resource contributions made by constituent peers. In this paper, we address the problem of optimal cooperation policy setting for individual peers by taking into account their rationality, and with respect to a set of overall constraints imposed by resource-driven requirements of the system. We formalize distributed cooperation policy setting as an asynchronous distributed decision making (ADDM) process and represent an integrated design for this process in two top-down and bottom-up phases. In top-down design, we specify the overall objective and constraints and in line with them, we synthesize the local objectives of individual peers. We show that the rational peers should continuously adapt their cooperation policies asynchronously and autonomously according to the policies of the other participants in order to maximize their local objectives. To this end, we devise a self-organizing interaction mechanism in the bottom-up phase and demonstrate that it coordinates asynchronous distributed decisions of individual peers with respect to the overall objective and constraints through local interactions.

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Since the performance of a system of interacting peers depends strongly on their individual contributions, the ratio between their provided and consumed resources should be set in line with the social welfare improvement, without relying on a central coordinator. In this paper, we devise a self-organized mechanism for cooperation policy setting of the interacting peers based on decision-theoretic analysis. By extensive simulation experiments, we demonstrate that when the proposed mechanism is followed, a Pareto optimal equilibrium emerges in the system from fairly coordinated decisions of the rational peers on their cooperation policies.

Abstract-Todays complex online applications often require the interaction of multiple services that potentially belong to different business entities. Interoperability is a core element of such an environment, yet not a straightforward one. In this paper, we argue that the emergence of interoperability is an economic process among rational agents and, although interoperability can be mutually beneficial for the involved parties, it is also costly and may fail to emerge. As a sample scenario, we consider the emergence of semantic interoperability among rational service agents in the service-oriented architectures (SOA) and analyze their individual economic incentives with respect to utility, risk and cost. We model this process as a positive-sum game and study its equilibrium and evolutionary dynamics. According to our analysis, which is also experimentally verified, certain conditions on the communication cost, the cost of technological adaptation, the expected mutual benefit from interoperability as well as the expected loss from isolation drive the process.

Abstract. Today's complex online applications often require the interaction of multiple (web) services that belong to potentially different business entities. Interoperability is a core element of such an environment, yet not a straightforward one due to the lack of common data semantics. The problem is often approached by means of standardization procedures in a top-down manner with limited adoption in practice. (De facto) standards for semantic interoperability most commonly emerge in a bottom-up approach, i.e., involving the interaction and information exchange among self-interested industrial agents. In this paper, we argue that the emergence of semantic interoperability can be seen as an economic process among rational agents and, although interoperability can be mutually beneficial for the involved parties, it may also be costly and might fail to emerge. As a sample scenario, we consider the emergence of semantic interoperability among rational web service agents in service-oriented architectures (SOAs), and we analyze their individual economic incentives with respect to utility, risk and cost. We model this process as a positive-sum game and study its equilibrium and evolutionary dynamics. According to our analysis, which is also experimentally verified, certain conditions on the communication cost, the cost of technological adaptation, the expected mutual benefit from interoperability, as well as the expected loss from isolation, drive the process.