Conferences
Papers in Peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings:
Anjan Ghosh and Bodhibrata Nag, “Re-engineering the Case Method for tomorrow”, North American Case Research Association Conference(October 2022)
Charles Light, Yixuan Wang, Ranjan Pal, and Bodhibrata Nag, “How do Smart Citizens Favor Personal Data Markets under Surveillance Capitalism?”, INFORMS Society for Marketing Science (ISMS) Conference (June 2022)
—We investigate and rationalize how individuals in a surveilled developing economic society value a human-centric data economy (HCDE). We first design and conduct a non-online pilot field experiment on approximately 22500 human subjects across smart cities in India from 2014-2019, and collect data reflecting the impact of monetary incentives on these subjects to voluntarily trade their (personal) data in the digital surveillance age. Consequently, we study how various degrees of incentive influence subject preferences – both, when they are, or are not well-informed about the commercial malpractices their personal data might be subjected to. We analyze and rationalize (from the viewpoint of behavioral economics) two main observations in general for the Indian population: (i) despite being warned of the commercial malpractices associated with their personal data in the mobile and IoT age, they prefer to trade data for incentives, and (ii) the willingness of individuals to trade personal data is statistically heavy-tailed, and hints at following a weak power-law. The broader social impact of such HCDEs lie on three fronts: (1) a society preferring HCDEs will likely enable high-quality personal data to be collected by online (social) applications in a trustworthy fashion that subsequently will catalyse a much-improved AI-driven multi-stakeholder targeted advertising business, (2) the GDP-centric macroeconomic inequality in a developing economy might considerably reduce due to online (social) application users earning from their personal data, and (3) much to the like of these application businesses, users will invest in increased time and meaningful attention to the former that will act as upward spiral feedbacks on improved personal data collection.
Samir Maity, Bodhibrata Nag and Sushovan Khatua, “Leveraging Machine Learning of Indian Railways Public Procurement Data for Managerial Insights”, International Conference on Data Analytics in Public Procurement and Supply Chain (June 2022)
—This paper proposes and demonstrates (a) a supervised machine learning methodology to predict the expenditure incurred on procurement, repair, and reconditioning of components as well as expenditure incurred on procurement of fuel based on the performance of the Indian Railways and (b) an unsupervised machine learning methodology to classify the good and poor performing administrative zones, using the data of expenditure incurred on procurement, repair and reconditioning of components as well as expenditure incurred on procurement of fuel and the performance. The first methodology will aid managers in determining whether the expenditure incurred is more than what should be incurred. Further, it may also benefit the managers in fine-tuning the frequency of replacement of components. The second methodology will assist managers in searching for best practices of maintenance in good performing zones, which can be propagated in the poor performing zones to lower the overall expenditure on maintenance.
Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan) and Bodhibrata Nag et.al, “How Do Humans Value Privacy in Smart Cities?”, INFORMS Winter Simulation Conference (December 2021)
—The concept of a human-centric data economy (HCDE) in which an individual’s data, used for e-commerce, should be paid for, is on the rise. However, HCDEs can only be successfully operational only if humans voluntarily prefer to trade their data, despite the privacy risks accompanying such a trade. In this paper, we investigate and rationalize how humans value their data privacy. We run a pilot non-online experiment in certain smart cities in India to study the impact of monetary incentives on the privacy preference of 22.5K human subjects. Through this experiment, we study (a) how various degrees of incentive influence human preference to voluntarily trade their data (a proxy to privacy) with the demand side of the digital economy – both, when they are, or are not well-informed in prior about the commercial malpractices their personal data might be subjected to, and (b) underlying social patterns that characterize these preferences.
Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan), Bodhibrata Nag, Jonathan Crowcroft, Swades De, “Consensual Privacy Trading Will Improve Societal Privacy Welfare”, INFORMS Conference on Security(February 2020)
—In this era of IoT/mobile apps, huge quantities of surveillance data about consumer activities offer opportunities for economic and societal value creation. However, they equally open up channels for consumer privacy breaches. In this talk we detail the need and modalities of consensual privacy trading – a pioneering idea we introduce (and mathematically validate) that allows economically efficiently trading consumer personal information with their consent and return benefits, rather than non-consensually ‘stealing’ this data, as many commercially motivated firms do. The major societal impact behind such an idea is the improvement in privacy welfare between consumers and data gatherers.
Ranjan Pal(University of Michigan), Leana Golubchik, Konstantinos Psounis, Jonathan Crowcroft, John Kelly, Bodhibrata Nag, “A Cautionary Look at Cyber-risk Management for Modern Cyber-infrastructures”, INFORMS Conference on Security(February 2020)
—Service liability interconnections among modern IT/IoT-networked service organizations create potential channels for (catastrophic) cascading service disruptions due to cyber-risks posed by state-of-the-art DDoS, APT, and ransomware hacks. In this talk we discuss the role of the liability network topology and statistical cyber-risk distributions on the feasibility and effectiveness of the growing and much needed risk management services (e.g., cyber-insurance) for modern cyber/critical-infrastructures, and provide cautionary suggestions for the development of such markets for the welfare of society.
Somu Gorai, Sanjeet Singh, Bodhibrata Nag, “Integrated Production Planning and Multi-echelon Inventory Placement for Dairy Products”, XXIII Annual International Conference of the Society of Operations Management (SOM 2019)
Bodhibrata Nag(2013).Heavy Haul Corridor Selection and Service Design Models in Proceedings of 10th Heavy Haul International Conference,February 2013, New Delhi. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2323265
—Heavy haul corridors are capital intensive and are relatively expensive to maintain. It is therefore imperative that heavy haul corridors are chosen with care, such that sufficient traffic is available on the corridors to ensure adequate returns. The strategic choice will be dictated by projected pattern and volume of freight traffic, projected pattern of passenger traffic and terminal facilities. Various choices may be obtained with different rolling stock and locomotive capacity to obtain scenarios with existing and future fleet characteristics, as well as future terminal facilities. Further, tactical operating plans for networks with heavy haul corridors should be designed properly to ensure maximum utilization of such corridors with a given set of customer demands, rolling stock and locomotive size and capacity, terminal facilities and capacity of peripheral networks. Such operating plans which might span from a fortnight to three months, include decisions regarding routes, frequency of services, aggregation and disaggregation policies, empties repositioning policies and direct or consolidating train service policies. These operating plans may also depend on the service level committed to a customer, which is again tied to a particular pricing. This paper proposes two operations research based models: (i) a model for choosing a heavy haul corridor(s) within an existing network and (ii) a model for design of an optimal operating plan for an existing network with a designated heavy haul corridor(s). The models are further demonstrated on a hypothetical railroad network with test data.
—Bodhibrata Nag and Jeetendra Singh(2012).A multi-criteria approach for railway project portfolio selection in Proceedings of 10th International Conference on Transportation Planning & Implementation Methodologies for Developing Countries, December 2012, Mumbai. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2323253 In an emerging economy, transport planners have a difficult task of allocating scarce and costly capital amongst the available shelf of railway projects to effectively meet the increasing demands for railway infrastructure. Hitherto, a single criterion such as IRR was being used for ranking and selection of railway projects; however of late, planners have realized the need to incorporate other economic and strategic criteria too in project portfolio selection. There is thus now a need for an analytical tool to assist the decision makers in systematically evaluating the options for optimal allocation of capital amongst railway projects, using various criteria simultaneously. This paper proposes a two-phase analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal solution (TOPSIS)-Global Criteria approach for the purpose, wherein AHP is used to determine the weights of each criterion based on the planners’ evaluation of their relative importance. A single objective function is then obtained using TOPSIS-Global Criteria approach, which is used to identify the optimal capital allocation amongst competing projects. The methodology is demonstrated on a test case of a shelf of railway projects to obtain the best project portfolio fund allocation within the available capital resources.
—Bodhibrata Nag(2006).Survey of Operations Research Applications in Railways in Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, August 2006, Jaipur
—Bodhibrata Nag(2006).Facility Location on Railway Networks in Proceedings of 7th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, August 2006, Jaipur
—Bodhibrata Nag and Manabendra Nath Pal(2004).Optimal Design of Timetables to maximize schedule reliability and minimize energy consumption, rolling stock and crew deployment in Proceedings of 2nd UIC(International Congress of Railways) Energy Efficiency Conference,February 2-4, 2004, Paris. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2323254 and http://www.uic.org/IMG/pdf/Powerpoint-nag-2.pdf
Papers presented in conferences:
—Bodhibrata Nag(October 2010).Operations Research Opportunities in the Railroad Industry. Paper presented at 12th Annual Midwest Optimization Meeting, Wayne State University, Detroit
—Bodhibrata Nag, Manabendra Nath Pal and Sourav Basu(September 2008).Location of intermodal terminals for freight movement in an existing rail network: a strategic planning model. Paper presented at XIV Latin Ibero-American Congress on Operations Research, Cartagena de Indias.
—Bodhibrata Nag (October 2007). Analytic Modeling of Railway Capacity. Paper presented at 8th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, Bangkok
—Bodhibrata Nag and Shekhar Chaudhuri (November 2006). Indian Management Education: Perspective & Challenges. Paper presented at International Conference on Management Education, Bangalore
—Bodhibrata Nag(April 2005). Optimal Design of Timetables to maximize schedule reliability, Paper presented at LRDSS Academia-Industry Partnership Workshop, Vadodara
Invited talks:
—Bodhibrata Nag (May 2021), 1.“Quality Management in Loco Sheds”, Talk given at Indian Railway Institute of Electrical Engineering, Nasik
—Bodhibrata Nag(August 2019) “The Business of Railways”, Talk given at Vinod Gupta School of Management, IIT Kharagpur.
—Bodhibrata Nag(February 2018) “Freight Network Design and Tanker Scheduling”, Talk given at Indian Maritime University, Kolkata Campus.
—Bodhibrata Nag(July 2017) “Effective Leadership -a key for project success”, Talk given at National Seminar on Objectives & Challenges of Project Management organized by Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers and Indian Chemical Council, Kolkata
—Bodhibrata Nag (June 2016) “Building an Impactful Academic Career”, IIM Rohtak.
—Bodhibrata Nag (January 2016) “Modal Shift- Infrastructure and Policy Imperatives”. Talk given at EU-India Research & Innovation Partnership for Efficient and Sustainable Freight Transportation (REINVEST) International Workshop, IIT Bombay
—Bodhibrata Nag(September 2014) Focused Teams & Enlightened Leadership -the key to successful projects. Keynote address given at IBM’s Project Management Sharenet.
—Bodhibrata Nag and Katta Murty (September 2013) Two Greedy Heuristics for the Diesel Locomotive Fuelling Problem in Railroad Operations. Talk given at National Workshop on Optimization and its Application hosted by ORSI-Durgapur Chapter. Paper available at DOI: 10.1007/s12597-012-0082-5.
—Bodhibrata Nag(June 2013).Academia-Industry collaborations: lessons from the US. Talk given at Ministry of Human Resource Development’s Eastern Regional Workshop on Industry-Academia Collaboration for Greater Employ-ability, BESU(Howrah).
—Bodhibrata Nag(October 2010).Operations Research Applications in Railways. Talk given at Industrial and Operations Engineering Department of College of Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
—Bodhibrata Nag(April 2010).Leading High-Performing R&D Project Teams. Talk given at Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre(Department of Atomic Energy), Kolkata
—Bodhibrata Nag(July 2008).Supply Chain Management in Retail- the road ahead. Talk given at Retail Estate Summit organized by Indian Chamber of Commerce, Kolkata
—Bodhibrata Nag(November 2007).Operations Research Applications on Railways. Talk given at Institute of Rail Transport, Ministry of Railways,New Delhi
—Bodhibrata Nag (August 2007).Equipment Management Systems- Latest trends. Talk given at 7th Indian Army Management Studies Board Meeting at College of Military Engineering, Pune.
—Bodhibrata Nag(July 2007).State of Logistics in India. Keynote address at National Seminar on Supply Chain Management, Visakhapatnam.
—Bodhibrata Nag and Shekhar Chaudhuri (October 2006).Achieving Excellence with Equity in Management Education in India. Talk given at AIMS Directors & Deans Round Table, Kolkata.
—Bodhibrata Nag(August 2006). Petri Nets: Theory & Applications. Tutorial Session at 7th International Conference on Operations & Quantitative Management, Jaipur.