A unified complex network framework for environmental decision -making with applications to green logistics and electronic waste recycling

• Main Author: Toyasaki, Fuminori
• Language: ENG
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2005
• Subjects: Operations research|Industrial engineering
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI3193949

In this dissertation, I developed a unified complex network framework for environmental decision-making. I focused on complex network systems arising in the context of green logistics, including global supply chains, and electronic waste recycling. The framework that I developed is able to handle many decision-makers at the tiers of the networks, and enables the prediction of the flows of the materials between tiers as well as the prices at the tiers, along with the emissions generated, and the incurred costs and profits. I first developed a theoretical framework for supply chain networks with environmental concerns in the context of decision-making in the Information Age today. I allowed different decision-makers to weight the criteria (including the environmental ones) in distinct fashion. Subsequently, I generalized the original model to a global supply chain network model which included environmental criteria, electronic commerce, and risk management. I then developed an integrated reverse supply chain management framework that allows for the modeling, analysis, and computation of the material flows as well as the prices associated with the different tiers in the multitiered electronic recycling network. I also extended this model in order to deal with the environmental risk caused by hazardous material generated from the recycling processes. I assumed that the environmental risk due to hazardous material depends on the amount of residual hazardous material that is not extracted from electronic wastes by the processor as well as on the storage amount of hazardous waste that is not disposed yet by the hazardous material disposer. The models and computational methods were based on the methodologies of variational inequality theory for the study of the statics (cf. Nagurney (1999)) and projected dynamical systems for the dynamics (cf. Nagurney and Zhang (1996)).