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During the 2004–2009 building boom, building materials in the United States were in short supply, in particular drywall. This shortage arose from the vast demand for repairing and rebuilding houses caused by several large hurricanes, namely, Katrina and Rita.

The situation is complex because there are many stakeholders involved: manufacturers, suppliers, contractors, insurance companies, and homeowners. The problem begins with the suppliers (apart from the natural disasters that exacerbated the issue). The first question that should be asked is Why import drywall from overseas to use in the United States? and What regulations were in place regarding the usage of drywall, and so on. The next item that needs to be looked at is the homeowners. This is a very bad situation for them as they must evacuate their homes. Some of them had to move out and rent an apartment. Some of them sold their houses for less than half of what they paid for them. The problem is What can they do about the defective drywall in their houses? Further, Will they get their money back? If they do, Who is going to pay for it? or Where are they going to stay?, and so on. Since there are an estimated 100,000 homes in more than 20 states that were effected in this situation, this chapter will focus on the homeowners who live in Virginia, as it is the residence of the chapter’s primary author. It is very important to understand the homeowners’ problems and also their options to overcome this problem. Various attempts have been made to solve the situation but the problem is still there. The problem not only involves homeowner compensation but also a need to prevent this situation from happening in the future.

US Navy warships are capital-intensive national defense assets that require periodic depot and intermediate level maintenance availabilities (periods). Oftentimes, ship maintenance is deferred or forgone altogether due to geopolitical strife or fiscal challenges. The impacts of missed maintenance are not only a burden on ships’ crews, but they also have a deleterious effect on current and future readiness. It is a difficult task to strike a balance between current and future readiness when insufficient resources are available to sustain a fleet of warships. This paper draws from multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) to develop a ship maintenance decision-making model that considers attributes from the current and life cycle readiness cohorts. Using the current maintenance plans for two DDG 51-class ships entering availabilities in same fiscal year, this model determines which ship is more capable of absorbing a loss of maintenance and planned modernizations relative to the context of the decision environment. Five attributes are considered for the overall decision: mandatory maintenance, non-mandatory maintenance, mission impact from maintenance, mission impact from planned modernizations, and maintenance backlog. The model presented here is generalizable to a number of U.S. Navy ships and watercraft and can be used to inform decision-makers of the short- and long-term impacts of deferring critical maintenance.

This chapter develops a methodology to assist critical facility operators in designing physical protection systems to defend against a single adversary (thief, saboteur, terrorist, etc.) attack. The developed methodology utilizes a multicriteria decision-making approach that balances the competing goals of minimal security system cost and maximum system performance. The methodology utilizes a network-based approach to facility security system design and analysis, which locates physical protection (detection, delay, and response) elements throughout a facility. These elements enable the facility owner to prevent attacks through deterrence and to defeat the adversary if he or she chooses to attack. The developed approach results in the ability for the facility operator to assess relative facility and/or infrastructure safety, and make decisions regarding how to optimally allocate resources for physical protection elements to balance cost and performance. A hypothetical example is discussed which demonstrates the usefulness of the developed methodology.

This chapter examines why U.S. offshore wind farms do not exist and identifies sites most suitable for development based on European offshore wind farms. A survey of current literature indicates that U.S. development is stalled due to a lack of government and financial support. The literature identifies common attributes associated with the successful deployment of European offshore farms and provides a basis for a multi-criteria decision analysis of potential U.S offshore wind farm sites. A review of European wind farms indicates that a small, 10–50 MW farm located in shallow waters of less than 20 m might be more successful than previous U.S. development efforts. The review also identifies common European attributes deemed critical for success. These attributes are modified, taking into account unique U.S. factors, and a set of nine critical attributes are derived for use in a multi-criteria decision analysis model of suitable U.S. locations. The nine critical attributes (wind quality, water depth, shore distance, state support, public support, industrial support, population density, weather, and energy costs), along with associated utility function values, are applied to 23 past and current proposed U.S. sites. The model identified three sites, in Galveston Island, TX, Port Isabel, TX, and Block Island, RI, as being most favorable for a small wind farm.

A discussion of call center agent work selection preferences is presented in the context of what is referred to herein as the accept–avoid decision. In call centers where agents are given autonomy to select calls from a shared queue for work without a standard routing mechanism, it is likely that each agent uses a different set of criteria and has different preferences which influence their decision to accept a call or avoid it. In order to understand such preferences, simple heuristics are developed and implemented into an additive linear model as an example to estimate the derived utility an agent may receive from the decision to accept a call. The game theoretic implications of such decision making by a group or team of agents are also discussed to illustrate the dilemma of the universally avoided call, and how agents may compete for acceptance or avoidance of particular calls.

Historically, public and private sector enterprises have been viewed as existing on opposing ends of the performance measurement spectrum, due to seemingly incompatible worldviews. Private sector enterprises are traditionally viewed as profit-driven and focused on a return on investment paradigm, while public sector enterprises are seen as mission-oriented and answerable to a paradigm less focused on investment and more on improving enterprise capability. The authors propose that, in fact, these worldviews are not mutually exclusive, as private and public sector enterprises must both account for investment and mission concerns. In order to leverage real synergy to be gained from distinct but complementary viewpoints, a systemic approach to evaluating organization performance through the novel fusion of operational test and evaluation and multi-criteria decision analysis is developed. Use of this framework is demonstrated within an enterprise that involves consideration of public and private sector concerns. The authors hope that the approach proposed in this chapter will enable public and private sector enterprises to comprehensively address performance.