Visit our website for sample chapters!

This first-rate text explores the theory and methodology of systems engineering in evaluating alternative courses of action and associated decision-making policies. It treats criteria as multidimensional, rather than scalar, in the development of normative theories. These contribute to a behavioral theory of decision making and provide guidance for exercising judgment. An introductory discussion of the systemic approach to judgment and decision is followed by explorations of psychological value measurements, utility, classical decision analysis, and vector optimization theory. The second section chiefly deals with methods of assessing and evaluating alternatives, including both noninteractive and interactive methods. A taxonomy and a comparative evaluation of methods conclude the text.

Groundwater in the West covers the use, management, laws, and politics of groundwater in the West. The first chapter provides an overview of important groundwater management and policy issues. Each of the subsequent chapters presents a brief description of the water environment in each of the 19 states and the major groundwater regions in the state. These chapters provide a summary of ground water use and consumption by type of consumption, an examination of groundwater problems in the state, and a summary of groundwater law, administration, and regulations. The chapters conclude with a section summarizing groundwater politics (where appropriate) and an evaluation of future potential groundwater management problems. Hydrologists and people involved in groundwater use, control, and management will find the book invaluable.

Mathematical Programming has been of significant interest and relevance in engineering, an area that is very rich in challenging optimization problems. In particular, many design and operational problems give rise to nonlinear and mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems whose modeling and solu tion is often nontrivial. Furthermore, with the increased computational power and development of advanced analysis (e. g. , process simulators, finite element packages) and modeling systems (e. g. , GAMS, AMPL, SPEEDUP, ASCEND, gPROMS), the size and complexity of engineering optimization models is rapidly increasing. While the application of efficient local solvers (nonlinear program ming algorithms) has become widespread, a major limitation is that there is often no guarantee that the solutions that are generated correspond to global optima. In some cases finding a local solution might be adequate, but in others it might mean incurring a significant cost penalty, or even worse, getting an incorrect solution to a physical problem. Thus, the need for finding global optima in engineering is a very real one. It is the purpose of this monograph to present recent developments of tech niques and applications of deterministic approaches to global optimization in engineering. The present monograph is heavily represented by chemical engi neers; and to a large extent this is no accident. The reason is that mathematical programming is an active and vibrant area of research in chemical engineering. This trend has existed for about 15 years.

This book discusses the environmental impact of water resources projects. Information from literature related to the implementation of studies on water resources projects such as dams and reservoirs, channelization, and dredging are summarized. Other topics covered are methodologies, transport, and decision-making.