Negotiating Cooperation between Adjacent Service Networks

Abstract

The previous chapters of this book have dealt mainly with decision problems related to managing an individual service network. The implicit assumption underlying those chapters is that the network management, while considering alternative policies, should arrive at a solution that is solely based on the network’s own resources. In practice there are situations in which cooperation between adjacent networks might be considered. For example, a municipality may wish to request the services of an emergency unit (e.g., an ambulance, a fire engine) from a neighboring municipality at times when all its own local servers are busy.