Notwithstanding the usefulness of system dynamics in analyzing complex policy problems, policy design is far from straightforward and in many instances trialand-error driven. To address this challenge, we propose to combine system dynamics with network controllability, an emerging field in network science, to facilitate the detection of effective leverage points in system dynamics models and th...

Abstract: The main objective of this article is to develop a matrix pencil approach for the study of the controllability and reachability of a class of linear singular discrete time systems. The description equation of a practical system may be established through selection of the proper state variables. Time domain analysis is the method of analyzing the system based on this description equati...

In this paper, recent results on the structural properties of positive linear systems are collected and analyzed. The study of reachability and controllability properties of positive invariant linear systems is focussed, mainly, in the recent years, either for discrete and continuous systems when results are known. In addition, all known results of positive periodic linear systems are discussed...

In this paper, we provide optimal solutions to two different (but related) input/output design problems involving large-scale linear dynamical systems, where the cost associated to each directly actuated/measured state variable can take different values, but is independent of the labeled input/output variable. Under these conditions, we first aim to determine and characterize the input/output p...

Heat exchanger networks are widely employed in the chemical processing industries to recover energy, resulting in reduced operating costs. Several methodologies can be found in the literature for the design of heat exchanger networks. Typical criteria are maximum energy recovery and minimum heat transfer area. However, the heat integration of process streams can lead to process structures that ...

We introduce a quantitative measure of robustness of network controllability. Given a set of control nodes which drive the network, we investigate the effect of edge removal on the number of controllable nodes. We find that the mean degree of the network is a major factor in determining the robustness of random networks. Nonetheless, a comparison between real and random networks indicates a sta...

This paper investigates the robustness of strong structural controllability for linear time-invariant and time-varying directed networks with respect to perturbations, including edge deletions additions. In this direction, we introduce a new construct referred as perfect graph associated network given set control nodes. The tight upper bounds on number edges that can be added to, or removed fro...

A challenging problem in network science is to control complex networks. In existing frameworks of structural or exact controllability, the ability to steer a complex network toward any desired state is measured by the minimum number of required driver nodes. However, if we implement actual control by imposing input signals on the minimum set of driver nodes, an unexpected phenomenon arises: du...