Sharif Digital Repository

Deregulation in power systems creates new uncertainties and escalates the previous ones. The presence of these uncertainties causes the transmission network to remain a monopoly and the private investors not to be interested in investing in new transmission lines. This article presents a new merchant-based transmission network expansion planning algorithm from the viewpoint of private investors. The point estimation method is used to handle the uncertainties, and the genetic algorithm is used as the optimization tool. The proposed method provides insights for private investors to deal with the uncertainties and to find appropriate transmission projects in which to invest. Copyright  

In this paper, we study the problem of private function computation, where a user wants to compute a function of some inputs, using N in mathbb{N} servers, where the function is a private combination/composition of some K in mathbb{N} public basic functions {f 1 , f 2 ,., f K }. More precisely, for some inputs W m , m [1 : M], the user's goal is to calculate hleft( {{W-m}} ight) = sumolimits-{j = 1}^J {{alpha -j}} {h-j}left( {{W-m}} ight), for some J in mathbb{N}, some scalers α j , j [1 : J], and some functions h j (.), j [1 : J], where each is an arbitrary compositions of the basic functions {f 1 , f 2 ,., f K }. The computation is done through a sequence of queries to N servers. In each... 

The widespread use of cloud computing services raises the question of how one can delegate the processing tasks to the untrusted distributed parties without breaching the privacy of its data and algorithms. Motivated by the algorithm privacy concerns in a distributed computing system, in this paper, we introduce the private function retrieval (PFR) problem, where a user wishes to efficiently retrieve a linear function of K messages from N non-communicating replicated servers while keeping the function hidden from each individual server. The goal is to find a scheme with minimum communication cost. To characterize the fundamental limits of the communication cost, we define the capacity of PFR... 

Deregulation in power systems has created new uncertainties and increased the previous ones. The presence of these uncertainties causes the transmission network to remain monopoly and the private investors not being interested in investing in this section. This paper presents a new merchant-based transmission expansion planning (TEP) formulation from the viewpoint of private investors. The information-gap decision theory (IGDT) is used to model the inherent uncertainties associated with the estimated investment cost of candidate lines and the forecasted system load and NSGAII is utilized to solve the multi-objective optimization problem. This algorithm helps private investors to select the... 

In this paper, we investigate the index coding problem in the presence of an eavesdropper. Messages are to be sent from one transmitter to a number of legitimate receivers who have side information about the messages, and share a set of secret keys with the transmitter. We assume perfect secrecy, meaning that the eavesdropper should not be able to retrieve any information about the message set. This problem is a generalization of the Shannon's cipher system. We study the minimum key lengths for zero-error and perfectly secure index coding problems  

Deregulation in power systems has created new uncertainties and increased the previous ones. The presence of these uncertainties, high investment costs, and long period investment return cause the transmission network to remain monopoly and the private investors not being interested in investing in this section. This paper presents a new approach for transmission expansion planning (TEP) in order to maximize private investment absorption. The robust optimization method is used to model the inherent uncertainties associated with the estimated investment cost of candidate lines and the forecasted system load. The genetic algorithm (GA) is, also, utilized as the methodology to solve the... 

The tourism and hospitality industry significantly impacts socio-economic development and cultural growth in developing countries. This study develops an integrated multicriteria decision-making and optimization model for partner selection in public-private partnership (PPP) projects in the hospitality industry. The proposed model uses a weighted influence non-linear gauge system to evaluate the partners. A multi-objective optimization model is then utilized to select a partner for each PPP project using a linear programming metric solution approach. A case study demonstrates the applicability of the proposed model in a PPP project in Iran to renovate and convert historic houses into hotels... 

A new scenario for simultaneously generating a secret key and two private keys among three Terminals in the presence of an external eavesdropper is considered. Terminals 1, 2 and 3 intend to share a common secret key concealed from the external eavesdropper (Terminal 4) and simultaneously, each of Terminals 1 and 2 intends to share a private key with Terminal 3 while keeping it concealed from each other and from Terminal 4. All four Terminals observe i.i.d. outputs of correlated sources and there is a public channel from Terminal 3 to Terminals 1 and 2. An inner bound of the secret key-private keys capacity region is derived and the single letter capacity regions are obtained for some... 

As part of its Paris Agreement commitment, Iran pledged to decrease 4 % of its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from 2020 to 2030. About 29% of total emission in Iran belongs to electricity supply while energy consumption in other sectors (transport, household, and industry) have a lower share in CO2 emission. The main concern here is finding the optimal mix of power plants in the electricity supply system that should be deployed to meet Iran’s mentioned respective targets and considering simultaneously interests of consumers and producers in this energy system. So, we developed a non-linear mathematical programming model for Iran’s electricity system to address this concern with changing... 

Many cities are struggling to keep pace with limited budgets and rapid growth. Economic development models involving public-private partnerships (P3s) can help drive economic revitalization. The choice of partners plays a vital role in the success or failure of sustainable P3 initiatives. In this study, we propose a novel integrated sustainable private partner selection framework in P3s. The proposed model is composed of the best-worst method (BWM), the weighted influence non-linear gauge system (WINGS), and the technique of order preference similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS). The BWM is used to identify the importance weights of the economic, environmental, social, and technological... 

Making efficient use of transportation infrastructure has always been a concern. Traveler information provisions (TIPs) assist commuters in making better travel decisions and therefore lead to increased mobility and more efficient travel. The ongoing economic crisis and shrinking public funding have made the public-private partnership (PPP) an attractive instrument for promoting TIP. Such initiatives have been much discussed in developed countries. The use of PPP to fund public projects in developing countries, however, is in its infancy, and the related issues do not receive adequate attention in the literature. In this study, PPP opportunities in TIP were assessed in the case of a city in...