Procedures for the Establishment of Standards. Final Report. Vol.2

This final report summarizes two years of research on analyzing procedures for the establishment of standards. The research was sponsored by the Volkswagenwerk Foundation and jointly carried out at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis at Laxenburg and the Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The final report is meant to be both a problem-oriented review of related work in the area of environmental standard setting and an executive summary of the main research done during the contract period. The following eleven technical papers (Volume II of the Final Report) are reference reports written to accompany Volume I. They describe the studies and findings performed under the contract in more detail, and they have been either published as IIASA Research Memoranda or as outside publications, or were especially written for this report. These technical reports are structured in four parts: (1) policy analyses of standard setting procedures; (2) decision and game theoretic models for standard setting; (3) applications of decision game theoretic models to specific standard setting problems; and (4) biological basis for standard setting

Risks and decision making in development of new power plant projects

Thesis (Ph. D. in the field of Construction Engineering and Management)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 204-209).Power plant development projects are typically capital intensive and subject to a complex network of interconnected risks that impact development's performance. Failure to develop a power plant to meet performance constraints can come at great cost to the developer and other stakeholders involved. In order to develop an investment strategy plan based on their risk appetite, and manage risks effectively, developers must be able to identify and analyze project opportunity risks. This dissertation is motivated by the need to study the nature and impact of risks on a power plant development project, and to demonstrate how proper management of those risks can help mitigate these impacts. The purpose is to feed that information into developer's investment strategy to be able to understand whether or not to participate in particular power plant development projects, and how to participate. First phase of the dissertation is an analysis of power plant investment decisions and development process, followed by identification of risks across all stages of development. Through data mining of performance indicators of around 300 power plant development projects worldwide, clusters of geographical locations, energy technologies, and developer types are highlighted. This helps us understand which projects developers should consider for evaluation given performance trends of geographic locations, and energy technologies. Our research then introduces a novel approach to power plant project risk analysis. We combine a System Dynamics model of the power plant development process with an Analytical Network Process model that enables identification of key relationships among risks and their impact on the development process. The models are used to construct project risk profiles. These three models work together to show how developers can make risk informed decision when selecting amongst power plant project opportunities, how they should best prepare projects to mitigate negative impacts of risks involved, and how they should react to changes in managing development performance over a project's lifetime.by Ásbjörg Kristinsdóttir.Ph.D.in the field of Construction Engineering and Managemen

High-density affordable housing impact investing: a best-in-class project screening credit risk management model

Constrained housing supply coupled with rapid urbanisation and a volatile domestic credit market have put affordable rental housing development under the spotlight. Addressing this demands appropriate and deliberate capital provisions to induce the property development market to deliver the scale needed to tackle the supply-side of the problem. Inducements are needed for residential property developers to choose to develop high-density affordable rental housing on land that presents great accessibility to economically vibrant nodes, where land is priced at a premium. The greenfield residential property development space is in need of sophisticated and specific funding interventions to evolve it beyond the sporadic developments we observe located on the urban periphery on cheap land. The benefits of sophisticated funding models in commercial property have seen the widespread proliferation of building and investment activity. Rental housing, however, lags behind owing to an immature market, shallow investment analysis and rudimentary risk-weighted debt-funding solutions. These funding instruments impede developers building affordable housing schemes on well-located parcels of land near existing amenities and profoundly incorporate green technology into buildings. This research presents a proof of concept for a sophisticated model for high-density housing. A largely 'spatial economic' model for risk analysis, it is developed to attain a so-called Probability of Default Ratio ("PDR") by coalescing two formulae regarded as international best-practice: The risk types incorporated into the model are (1) borrower-level credit risk, (2) property/development-level risk, and (3) cash-flow risk factors. The research is proof of concept of a credit risk management tool for impact investment funding model using these formulae and Geographic Information Systems ("GIS"). It calculates the extent of credit risk for income-producing real estate fundamentals and uses endogenous factors- risk factors and drivers associated with the housing scheme to be build and the surrounding area it is to be built in. The study area covers the 336 contiguous municipal wards that make up the Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni metropolitan municipalities

Limitation to Innovation in the North American Console Video Game Industry 2001-2013: A Critical Analysis

In today\u27s marketplace the ability to innovate is considered a key driver of success and economic prosperity (Florida, 2002; Howkins, 2001). From an innovation perspective, video game development has often been viewed as an exemplary case of a creative digital industry whose products and services are quickly consumed and hence require a constant flow of new content. This dissertation reviews innovation in the video game industry more critically. After examining the main lines of contemporary innovation theory, it proposes a model of the innovation process in the development cycle of console video games, evaluating the roles of three principle actors: consumers, publishers and developers. It then shows how, while the interaction of these stakeholders sometimes results in original new products and services, it also often fails to do so and indeed can actually impede truly creative innovation. The study aims to dispel popular myths about the embrace of innovation by the video game industry and contribute to the debate on the role of innovation in today\u27s post-industrial economy

A framework for planning of offshore wind energy projects based on multi-objective optimisation and multi-criteria decision analysis.

The wind industry is determined to lower the costs of producing energy in all phases of the offshore wind project. During 2015–2016, projects achieved a levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of £97 and more recently it was announced that Ørsted guaranteed £57.5/MWh. Significant price increases on structural materials directly impact on larger scale wind projects, the overall cost of turbines, establishing effective supply chains, improving the consent procedures for new developments, governmental mechanisms and support, improving grid connections and finally reducing overall uncertainty and costs etc. The most important decisions at the planning stage of new investment are the selection of a profitable, cost-effective suitable offshore location and a support structure type, which greatly impact on the overall Life Cycle Costs (LCC). This research aims to introduce and apply a scalable framework to reveal and select the optimal offshore location deployment and support structure in Round 3 zones in the UK by considering the interplay of LCC aspects at the planning stage of development. This research produced a portfolio of five studies while developing the framework above. First, a comparative Political Economic Social Technological Legal Environmental (PESTLE) analysis on wind energy was performed. The analysis focused on Europe, Germany, the UK and Greece, where the UK was selected in this research as the world leader in offshore wind energy. Second, three state-of-the-art Multi-Objective Optimisation (MOO) algorithms were employed to discover optimum locations for an offshore wind farm. The 7-objective optimisation problem comprises of some of the most important techno-economic LCC factors that are directly linked to the physical aspects of each site. The results of Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA II), NSGA III and SPEA 2 algorithms follow a similar trend, where NSGA III demonstrated its suitability by revealing more uniform and clear optimum non-dominated solutions, also known as Pareto Front (PF), because of its main design compared to the other optimisers. Based on their frequency of appearance in the PF solutions, Seagreen Alpha, Seagreen Bravo, Teesside C, Teesside D, and the Celtic Array South West Potential development Area were discovered as the most appropriate. Since PF includes solutions from all regions, this provides the developer with the flexibility to accordingly assign costs in different development phases, as required, and to choose whether to invest the available budget on the installation or the maintenance stage of the project. Third, in order to reveal optimum locations for UK Round 3 offshore zones and each zone individually, three different wind farm layouts and four types of turbines were considered in an 8-objective formulation, where five LCC factors are directly linked to the physical aspects and restrictions of each location. NSGA II discovered Moray Firth Eastern Development Area 1, Seagreen Alpha, Hornsea Project One, East Anglia One and Norfolk Boreas in the PF solutions. Although layouts 1 and 2 were mainly selected as optimum solutions, the extreme case (layout 3) also appeared in the PF a few times. All this demonstrates the scalability and effectiveness of the framework. Fourth, the effectiveness of coupling MOO and Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods is demonstrated, so as to select the optimum wind farm Round 3 location in order to help stakeholders with investment decisions. A process on the criteria selection is also introduced, and seven conflicting criteria are considered by using the two variations of Technique for the Order of Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) in order to rank the optimum locationsthat were discovered by NSGA II. From the prioritisation list, Seagreen Alpha was found as the best option, three times more preferable than Moray Firth Eastern Development Area 1. Fifth, experts‘ opinions were employed in an MCDM process to select the support structure type in an offshore wind farm. For comparison, six deterministic MCDM methods and their stochastic expansion were employed; WSM, WPM, TOPSIS, AHP, ELECTRE I and PROMETHEE I in order to account for uncertainties systematically. It was shown that the methods can relate to each other and can deliver similar results. The jacket and monopile support structures were ranked first in most deterministic and stochastic approaches. Overall, the effectiveness of the introduced research framework to meet the aim of the research is demonstrated. The framework combines a) a prototype techno-economic model for offshore wind farm deployment by using the LCC and geospatial analysis, b) MOO by using NSGA II and c) survey data from real-world experts within MCDM by using a deterministic and stochastic version of TOPSIS.EngD in Renewable Energy Marine Structures (REMS

ICE-B 2010:proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business

The International Conference on e-Business, ICE-B 2010, aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners who are interested in e-Business technology and its current applications. The mentioned technology relates not only to more low-level technological issues, such as technology platforms and web services, but also to some higher-level issues, such as context awareness and enterprise models, and also the peculiarities of different possible applications of such technology. These are all areas of theoretical and practical importance within the broad scope of e-Business, whose growing importance can be seen from the increasing interest of the IT research community. The areas of the current conference are: (i) e-Business applications; (ii) Enterprise engineering; (iii) Mobility; (iv) Business collaboration and e-Services; (v) Technology platforms. Contributions vary from research-driven to being more practical oriented, reflecting innovative results in the mentioned areas. ICE-B 2010 received 66 submissions, of which 9% were accepted as full papers. Additionally, 27% were presented as short papers and 17% as posters. All papers presented at the conference venue were included in the SciTePress Digital Library. Revised best papers are published by Springer-Verlag in a CCIS Series book

Improving construction design : The lean thinking paradigm

A study has been conducted into improving construction design through the application of the lean thinking paradigm. Its objective was to identify the issues relating to design efficiency and how a lean thinking approach might address these issues. The investigation consisted of examining work already undertaken in the field by other researchers"to identify the state of the art. The change order request system was examined to gain first insights into waste in construction design, and to gauge the size of the opportunity for the application of lean thinking. An Electronic Data Gathering Tool (EDGT) was then developed to allow further exploration of the design decision making process at the system / sub-system level. The EDGT was used on three live construction projects. From the data recorded a design planning tool, Design Decision Planner (DDP), was created to help improve control of the design process and lead to a more standardised approach to construction design. Standardising the approach to product development is an important component of lean thinking. The main recommendations for making construction design lean are: Use DDP to plan and improve control of the design decision making process, assign design responsibility and to make the process more transparent. 2. Measuring progress against planned design is a useful process metric. 3. Improve the designer's cost and programme visibility when choosing between design options. 4. Redefine the role of the quantity surveyor from cost controller to value for money assessor. The role needs to be better integrated into the design process to reach its full potential. 5. Need to develop more rigorous methods of assessing the buildability of design options. This problem could be eased in the short-term by incorporating construction professionals into the early design phases. 6. Designers need to use more process reason drivers when choosing between design options, not just functional criteria. 7. The change order request system could be redesigned to identify the root causes of contract issue design changes and, hence, improve the design decision making process