IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ufzdps/22006.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Robustness - a challenge also for the 21st century: A review of robustness phenomena in technical, biological and social systems as well as robust approaches in engineering, computer science, operations research and decision aiding

Author

Listed:
  • Hüser, Christian

Abstract

Notions on robustness exist in many facets. They come from different disciplines and reflect different worldviews. Consequently, they contradict each other very often, which makes the term less applicable in a general context. Robustness approaches are often limited to specific problems for which they have been developed. This means, notions and definitions might reveal to be wrong if put into another domain of validity, i.e. context. A definition might be correct in a specific context but need not hold in another. Therefore, in order to be able to speak of robustness we need to specify the domain of validity, i.e. system, property and uncertainty of interest. As proofed by Ho et al. in an optimization context with finite and discrete domains, without prior knowledge about the problem there exists no solution what so ever which is more robust than any other. Similar to the results of the No Free Lunch Theorems of Optimization (NLFTs) we have to exploit the problem structure in order to make a solution more robust. This optimization problem is directly linked to a robustness/fragility tradeoff which has been observed in many contexts, e.g. 'robust, yet fragile' property of HOT (Highly Optimized Tolerance) systems. Another issue is that robustness is tightly bounded to other phenomena like complexity for which themselves exist no clear definition or theoretical framework. Consequently, this review rather tries to find common aspects within many different approaches and phenomena than to build a general theorem for robustness, which anyhow might not exist because complex phenomena often need to be described from a pluralistic view to address as many aspects of a phenomenon as possible. First, many different robustness problems have been reviewed from many different disciplines. Second, different common aspects will be discussed, in particular the relationship of functional and structural properties. This paper argues that robustness phenomena are also a challenge for the 21st century. It is a useful quality of a model or system in terms of the 'maintenance of some desired system characteristics despite fluctuations in the behaviour of its component parts or its environment' (s. [Carlson and Doyle, 2002], p. 2). We define robustness phenomena as solution with balanced tradeoffs and robust design principles and robustness measures as means to balance tradeoffs.

Suggested Citation

  • Hüser, Christian, 2006. "Robustness - a challenge also for the 21st century: A review of robustness phenomena in technical, biological and social systems as well as robust approaches in engineering, computer science, operatio," UFZ Discussion Papers 2/2006, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Division of Social Sciences (ÖKUS).
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ufzdps:22006
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/45202/1/51067061X.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gale, Douglas, 1996. "What have we learned from social learning?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 617-628, April.
    2. M. E. J. Newman & Michelle Girvan & J. Doyne Farmer, 2002. "Optimal Design, Robustness, and Risk Aversion," Working Papers 02-02-009, Santa Fe Institute.
    3. Shiv K. Gupta & Jonathan Rosenhead, 1968. "Robustness in Sequential Investment Decisions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(2), pages 18-29, October.
    4. Vincke, Ph., 1999. "Robust and neutral methods for aggregating preferences into an outranking relation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 405-412, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hites, R. & De Smet, Y. & Risse, N. & Salazar-Neumann, M. & Vincke, P., 2006. "About the applicability of MCDA to some robustness problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 174(1), pages 322-332, October.
    2. Gutierrez, Genaro J. & Kouvelis, Panagiotis & Kurawarwala, Abbas A., 1996. "A robustness approach to uncapacitated network design problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 362-376, October.
    3. Marco Cipriani & Antonio Guarino, 2009. "Herd Behavior in Financial Markets: An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 7(1), pages 206-233, March.
    4. Jacob K. Goeree & Leeat Yariv, 2015. "Conformity in the lab," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 15-28, July.
    5. Luca Anderlini & Dino Gerardi & Roger Lagunoff, 2012. "Communication and Learning," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(2), pages 419-450.
    6. Edouard Civel & Marc Baudry, 2018. "The Fate of Inventions. What can we learn from Bayesian learning in strategic options model of adoption ?," EconomiX Working Papers 2018-47, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    7. Jonathan E. Alevy & Michael S. Haigh & John List, 2006. "Information Cascades: Evidence from An Experiment with Financial Market Professionals," NBER Working Papers 12767, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Roy, Bernard, 2010. "Robustness in operational research and decision aiding: A multi-faceted issue," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(3), pages 629-638, February.
    9. Stone, Daniel F. & Miller, Steven J., 2013. "Leading, learning and herding," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 222-231.
    10. Cipriani, Marco & Guarino, Antonio & Uthemann, Andreas, 2022. "Financial transaction taxes and the informational efficiency of financial markets: A structural estimation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1044-1072.
    11. Stephanie De Mel & Kaivan Munshi & Soenje Reiche & Hamid Sabourian, 2021. "Herding with Heterogeneous Ability: An Application to Organ Transplantation," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2308, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    12. Park, Andreas & Sgroi, Daniel, 2012. "Herding, contrarianism and delay in financial market trading," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 1020-1037.
    13. De Filippis, Roberta & Guarino, Antonio & Jehiel, Philippe & Kitagawa, Toru, 2022. "Non-Bayesian updating in a social learning experiment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    14. Bester, Helmut & Konrad, Kai A., 2004. "Delay in contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 1169-1178, October.
    15. Eustace, Deogratias & Russell, Sr., Eugene R. & Landman, E. Dean, 2003. "Application of Robustness Analysis for Developing a Procedure for Better Urban Transportation Planning Decisions," Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, Transportation Research Forum, vol. 42(1).
    16. Gregorio Caetano & Vikram Maheshri, 2013. "Do 'Broken Windows' Matter? Identifying Dynamic Spillovers in Criminal Behavior," Working Papers 2013-252-22, Department of Economics, University of Houston.
    17. Paola Annoni & Rainer Brüggemann, 2009. "Exploring Partial Order of European Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 92(3), pages 471-487, July.
    18. Durbach, Ian N., 2014. "Outranking under uncertainty using scenarios," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 232(1), pages 98-108.
    19. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:4:y:2003:i:21:p:1-12 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Sobel, Joel, 2000. "Economists' Models of Learning," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 241-261, October.
    21. Lluís Bru & Xavier Vives, 2002. "Informational Externalities, Herding, and Incentives," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 158(1), pages 91-105, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:ufzdps:22006. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/doufzde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.