Algorithms Overview

All of the Algorithms sections are non-normative.

This section is about what computer programs (or humans with pencil and paper and a lot of work) can do with Valueflows economic networks once they are constructed on the Web or in a database.

Network-based algorithms

• Dependent Demand constructs schedules for operational economic networks from recipes

  • Many other scheduling algorithms can be used over the same recipes.

  • Gantt charts{target="_blank"} are a popular network schedule visualization.

  • Critical Path is another scheduling algorithm that analyzes a network of processes to figure out the bottlenecks, the processes that need special attention.

• Value Rollups summarize the total value of all inputs to the resulting output from a recipe.

• Value Equations determine how income should be distributed according to contributions to a deliverable item.

• Track and Trace follow the path of a resource forwards (to where it went) and backwards (where it came from, and what other resources went into it).

• Provenance is like Trace, focusing on the path of a resource and all of the other resources that went into it.

• Cash Flow is mostly about money, but could also apply to other resources, looking at the inflows and outflows on a timeline, historical in the past, forecasted in the future.

• Economic and Ecosystem Analysis:

  • System Dynamics{target="_blank"}

  • Systems Ecology{target="_blank"}, including Energy Flow Analysis{target="_blank"}

  • Input-Output Analysis{target="_blank"}

  • Environmentally Extended IPO Analysis{target="_blank"}

  • Material Flow Analysis{target="_blank"}

• Network Flows is a general name for all of those algorithms and many many more. See Flow Networks{target="_blank"} on Wikipedia and elsewhere.

There are similarities and differences among the algorithms:

• Scheduling algorithms and cash flows use time-phasing: placing planned or reported events on a timeline.

• Dependent Demand schedules backwards from an end date; Critical Path schedules forwards from a start date.

• Dependent Demand does an explosion: breaking down the end resource of a recipe into a tree of components and processes.

• Value Rollups do an implosion: summarizing all the inputs of the exploded tree of components and processes into a total value.

• The Economic and Ecosystem algorithms use Input-Process-Output Models{target="_blank"}

• All of those algorithms work on flow networks, otherwise known as directed graphs, composed of nodes and links between them.

Source{target="_blank"}

Agent-based algorithms

• Agent-Based Models{target="_blank"}

  • In biology{target="_blank"}

  • In economics{target="_blank"}

  • In sociology{target="_blank"}, including Social Network Analysis{target="_blank"}

• Complex adaptive systems{target="_blank"}