The General Reporting Initiative (GRI) is the standard for Corporate Sustainability Reporting. The relations for a set of global enterprises interrelationships are built with the Mutual Information (MI) between enterprises (GRI) reporting data. We describe the enterprises interrelation from the MI topology using chord diagrams to represent the inter and intra connectivity between geographical regions and economic sectors globally, by continents and countries. Detailed maps are presented for Europe and Asia regions/sectors as well as the relationship for Europe and Asia top reporting countries. Our findings reinforce previous research about the role of Europe as a driver of sustainability and its influence worldwide. The GRI maps outline the behavior of the involved economic sectors, for all the studied regions. Also, a measure relating the inter to intra connections is presented in order to describe the relationship inside and between regions/sectors.

In the image below you can appreciate a schematic representation of the GRI network and identified clusters at microscopical level of enterprises. Human society is “good” at clustering, at right you see a geographical representation of the GRI map at continent scale. We can study the system inter and intra relations at different scales, continents, regions, countries.

The aim is to map the offshoring network between regions and countries worldwide through the Panama Papers. The Panama Papers 2016 divulgence is the largest leak of offshoring and tax avoidance documentation. The leaked documents contain 2.6 Terabytes of information involving more than two hundred thousand of enterprises in more than two hundreds countries. Using the Offshore leaks database (https://offshoreleaks.icij.org) we related entities around the world through different types of relationships. These relationships were used in order to build an offshoring network at countries and geographical regions scales. The network will be characterized and described to map the intra and inter relation between the countries and regions, discovering which of them are the more prominent in the worldwide offshoring scenario.

Image: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org

These research projects are aimed to use a socio-physics modeling approach applied to areas that are considered discrete disciplines (sociology, economics, politics, etc.). These social systems will be modeled and analyzed focusing on how the structure of ties affects and constitutes actors (individuals/enterprises) and their relationships. Mainly, graph theory and complex network analysis will be used to describe the actors relationship connectivity. We will describe the a variety of systems, going from data to networks in order to analyze the structure and interactions of the actors in these systems. We will approach:

Rainwater harvesting is the process of collecting, storing, and distributing rainwater for reuse, rather than allowing it to run off. Greywater recycling consists of purifying processes that remove contaminants present in wastewater coming from faucets, showers, baths, clothes washing, and dishwashing, so that it can be reused, instead of becoming inlet wastewater for municipal wastewater treatment plants. In urban areas, rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling systems provide additional water supplies for houses, buildings, and industries, and also help to mitigate flooding events and pollution. Construction companies are looking for eco-friendly systems that benefit the environment while being profitable. This paper proposes a decision support system (DSS) for the design of rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling system (RHGRS) in residential construction projects. The DSS uses optimization to support construction companies in the design of a RHGRS that minimizes construction and operational costs. With the underlying optimization routine, the DSS addresses both the challenges of deciding whether to construct or not a RHGRS for a residential unit and its minimum-cost design. It is expected that the DSS will help construction companies to make decisions toward sustainable and eco-friendly cities.

Contact: Andres Medaglia

Increasing urbanization is an undeniable feature of this century. Addressing urban growth under severely constrained resources is a task that demands comprehensive efforts in planning towards efficient development: optimizing the treatment of resources (natural, economic) and residues (emissions, waste, idle time), for which an accurate understanding of urban processes is necessary. While network analysis and systems dynamics provide tools to describe and understand relationships within and between stakeholders and the physical world, statistical models and simulation allow to estimate and predict behavior patterns that enable better decision making. Qualitative and quantitative descriptions of urban problems are translated to optimization models that provide support in the design of public policy and strategic planning in problems such as: land-use regulation; incentives and planning for renewable energy adoption; configuration and planning for transportation systems; resource allocation for disaster preparedness.

Contact: Camilo Gomez

Resilience of infrastructure networks is key for urban development, mostly when understood as the way in which physical systems help societies prosper. In this sense, infrastructure engineering must incorporate the societal aspects related to infrastructure operation, namely: the organizations involved in infrastructure operation (government, agencies, contractors, regulators), and the general public who uses and benefits from these systems. The explicit consideration of these parties impacts the modeling and analysis of infrastructure systems with regards to how decisions are made (depending on the type of stakeholder, and its organizational constraints) and how the impact is measured (depending who the constituents are). For example, in the context of risk assessment and management, organizational constraints may imply stakeholders with divergent interests, or centralized vs. decentralized resource availability, decision processes, and operations, etc.; regarding user-related aspects, socio-economic vulnerability may have an impact on how different segments of the population experience the (lack of) service/benefits of an infrastructure system. Incorporating these aspects may affect the definition of performance metrics of interest and, consequently, influence risk management policies. In this project, we propose recovery strategies for interdependent networks of power, gas, and water in Shelby County, TN (USA), considering operators’ as well as societal objectives within an optimization framework.

Contact: Camilo Gomez

A problem setting where strategic network design is of foremost importance, is the preparedness for wildfire events. Once a wildfire starts, pre-positioned resources (e.g., tools) are delivered to operation centers where tactical decisions are made by firefighters. One of the key drivers for allocating the resources are the fire ignition points and the fire spread, which are stochastic in nature. By using simulated scenarios and a two-stage stochastic program, we have been able to decide upon strategic decisions related to locating facilities and their inventory levels; along with the tactical transportation and distribution decisions within a time-space network that allows for realistic size problems such as those arising in Bogotá.

Photo by usfwshq / CC BY

Contact: Andrés L. Medaglia and Camilo Gómez