Analytics for the Sharing Economy: Mathematics, Engineering and Business Perspectives PDF by Emanuele Crisostomi, Bissan Ghaddar, Florian Häusler, Joe Naoum-Sawaya, Giovanni Russo and Robert Shorten

Contents

Introduction
This edited volume grew out of our shared interest in one of the most disruptive, and paradoxically, oldest ideas, currently shaping businesses across the globe: collaborative consumption. Collaborative consumption, or the sharing economy as it is also known, refers to businesses that are based on sharing resources and services, as opposed to traditional ownership-based models. Driven by widespread connectivity, new technology bricks such as blockchain and 3D printing, and more informed consumers, this new paradigm is causing a wave of disruption across industries, and is leading to empowerment of citizens and communities in ways that were unimaginable just a short time ago. Prominent examples are the peer-to-peer lodging company Airbnb, transportation network companies such as Uber, and various online platforms which facilitate the exchange of services among users. This new class of business models is fundamentally different from the current standard approaches.

A key component of the sharing economy is the rise of the prosumer; that is the traditional consumer is replaced by a prosumer who both produces and consumes resources. This can make sharing economies both resilient and efficient, but not without significant challenges. For example, issues of fairness, dimensioning, and social compliance, and increasingly the orchestration of both humans and machines, are all issues that go to the heart of the design of sharing economy models. However, notwithstanding these challenges, market forces driving the emergence of a shared economy are irresistible, and many large corporations aremoving quickly to develop new shared services. Roughly speaking, opportunities around shared products give rise to a number of sharing models [1]. First, services based on opportunistic sharing of resources exploit the availability of idle resources and are facilitated by ubiquitous mobile connectivity. Second, in federated sharing, sharing efficiency is achieved by aggregating the demand of many users and their available resources. Finally, driven by the success of existing shared services, a number of large companies are already exploring ways to design products with the specific objective of these products being shared.

Our objective in this book is to provide a somewhat holistic overview of sharing economy systems. The design of sharing economy products is driving not only new and innovative businessmodels, but also innovation in technology, in business, and in the creation of newservices. It iswith this background in mind that we have organised this edited volume. First we give an overview of some of the mathematics that is of use in designing shared services; then we speak about some of the technologies that are enabling this revolution; and finally, we present a number of use cases that illustrate some of the services that are emerging in this area.

Finally, while this book has grown out of our common interest in this new area, we are very grateful to the Danish ForskEL Energy Collective project (grant no. 2016-1-12530) and to the Science Foundation Ireland Analytics for the Sharing Economy Project (grant 16/IA/4610), both of which fostered and enabled some of the collaboration that gave rise to this book.