Interdependent Scheduling Games
This addresses coordination challenges in critical infrastructure planning, such as disaster recovery, but is incremental as it applies existing game theory to a new model.
The paper tackles the problem of interdependent scheduling games where players control services that only accrue reward after all predecessor services are activated, motivated by large-scale infrastructure coordination. It provides a game-theoretic analysis covering welfare maximization, best responses, Nash dynamics, and equilibrium existence and computation.
We propose a model of interdependent scheduling games in which each player controls a set of services that they schedule independently. A player is free to schedule his own services at any time; however, each of these services only begins to accrue reward for the player when all predecessor services, which may or may not be controlled by the same player, have been activated. This model, where players have interdependent services, is motivated by the problems faced in planning and coordinating large-scale infrastructures, e.g., restoring electricity and gas to residents after a natural disaster or providing medical care in a crisis when different agencies are responsible for the delivery of staff, equipment, and medicine. We undertake a game-theoretic analysis of this setting and in particular consider the issues of welfare maximization, computing best responses, Nash dynamics, and existence and computation of Nash equilibria.