Module Leader

Professor Bob Shorten
r.shorten@imperial.ac.uk

This course is designed to provide a holistic view of sharing economy systems. 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 new technologies such as blockchain, and more informed consumers, this new paradigm is causing a wave of disruption, and is leading to empowerment of citizens and communities in ways that are unimaginable.              

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this module, students will be better able to:

  • Design sharing economy systems.
  • Evaluate research papers and case studies on sharing economy systems.
  • Analyse the design of distributed ledgers (Blockchain, Directed Acyclic Graphs).
  • Explain fundamentals of congestion management.
  • Apply the fundamentals of queueing theory and Markov chains.

Description of Content

Our objective in this course is to provide a holistic view of sharing economy systems. The design of sharing economy products is driving not only new and innovative business models, but also innovation in technology, in business, and in the creation of new services. It is with this background in mind that we have organised this course:

  • overview of some of the mathematics that is of use in designing shared services
  • technologies enabling this revolution
  • use cases illustrating some of the services emerging in this area