Overview of project appraisal

This paper is the outcome of Australian, state and territory governments agreeing to consult to develop a more sophisticated and consistent framework to assess and evaluate major infrastructure projects. Introduction A project appraisal process helps a government make good choices in terms of its goals. It starts with a clear understanding of the role of the project in addressing the key problems preventing achievement of goals specified in a broader integrated transport and land use plan. Projects should ideally be targeted at addressing the most important problems identified in broader transport plans. Good project appraisal also requires the full exploration of reform and investment options to address the key problems to ensure that the project solution provides the best return for society’s scarce resources. Cost–benefit analysis (CBA) is the primary appraisal tool at the options assessment and project prioritisation stages of the appraisal process It is a rigorous, transparent, quantitative method that measures the degree to which individual projects generate net benefits (benefits minus costs) across Australia, and allows comparison and ranking of options and projects. CBA sits within a broader planning and appraisal framework designed to ensure that projects: Flow from good strategic-level planning and assessment Are closely aligned with high-level national, state and territory goals Are aimed at addressing priority problems that are preventing goals from being achieved, and Adopt the best solution, based on a sound assessment of a wide range of potential options for solving the identified problems. The best practice transport planning and appraisal framework in Australia is defined jointly by the National guidelines for transport system management in Australia (NGTSM 2006) and Infrastructure Australia’s Better infrastructure decision-making (IA 2013a). The NGTSM is currently being updated and revised to: Align with Infrastructure Australia’s framework and guidelines Incorporate the complementary Austroads Guide to Project Evaluation and Guide to Road Transport Planning Provide guidance on important recent developments in tools and techniques that have significant implications for future approaches to transport planning and project appraisal. These include: wider economic benefits (WEBs), productivity metrics, real options analysis, use of computable general equilibrium models, and CBA of active travel, climate change adaptation, maintenance and non-infrastructure initiatives. Non-infrastructure initiatives covers regulatory changes, intelligent transport system projects, and travel behaviour change programs, and be published as website. The NGTSM covers all land transport modes. It sets out a comprehensive framework for integrated transport and land use planning and analytical approaches to transport project appraisal (mostly CBA). The NGTSM update will build on the non-CBA aspects of transport appraisal contained in the current guidelines, particularly the upfront integrated transport and land use aspects of the framework. This paper outlines first the broader appraisal process in which CBA sits, and second CBA itself with the recent developments of wider economic benefits and productivity metrics. &nbsp

Inhibitors to optimal project portfolio selection

The selection of projects and programs of work is a key function of both public and private sector organisations. Ideally, projects and programs that are selected to be undertaken are consistent with strategic objectives for the organisation; will provide value for money and return on investment; will be adequately resourced and prioritised; will not compete with general operations for resources and not restrict the ability of operations to provide income to the organisation; will match the capacity and capability of the organisation to deliver; and will produce outputs that are willingly accepted by end users and customers. Unfortunately,this is not always the case. Possible inhibitors to optimal project portfolio selection include: processes that are inconsistent with the needs of the organisation; reluctance to use an approach that may not produce predetermined preferences; loss of control and perceived decision making power; reliance on quantitative methods rather than qualitative methods for justification; ineffective project and program sponsorship; unclear project governance, processes and linkage to business strategies; ignorance, taboos and perceived effectiveness; inadequate education and training about the processes and their importance

Understanding requirements dependency in requirements prioritization: a systematic literature review

Requirement prioritization (RP) is a crucial task in managing requirements as it determines the order of implementation and, thus, the delivery of a software system. Improper RP may cause software project failures due to over budget and schedule as well as a low-quality product. Several factors influence RP. One of which is requirements dependency. Handling inappropriate handling of requirements dependencies can lead to software development failures. If a requirement that serves as a prerequisite for other requirements is given low priority, it affects the overall project completion time. Despite its importance, little is known about requirements dependency in RP, particularly its impacts, types, and techniques. This study, therefore, aims to understand the phenomenon by analyzing the existing literature. It addresses three objectives, namely, to investigate the impacts of requirements dependency on RP, to identify different types of requirements dependency, and to discover the techniques used for requirements dependency problems in RP. To fulfill the objectives, this study adopts the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method. Applying the SLR protocol, this study selected forty primary articles, which comprise 58% journal papers, 32% conference proceedings, and 10% book sections. The results of data synthesis indicate that requirements dependency has significant impacts on RP, and there are a number of requirements dependency types as well as techniques for addressing requirements dependency problems in RP. This research discovered various techniques employed, including the use of Graphs for RD visualization, Machine Learning for handling large-scale RP, decision making for multi-criteria handling, and optimization techniques utilizing evolutionary algorithms. The study also reveals that the existing techniques have encountered serious limitations in terms of scalability, time consumption, interdependencies of requirements, and limited types of requirement dependencies

Vulnerability-Based Impact Criticality Estimation for Industrial Control Systems

Cyber threats directly affect the critical reliability and availability of modern Industry Control Systems (ICS) in respects of operations and processes. Where there are a variety of vulnerabilities and cyber threats, it is necessary to effectively evaluate cyber security risks, and control uncertainties of cyber environments, and quantitative evaluation can be helpful. To effectively and timely control the spread and impact produced by attacks on ICS networks, a probabilistic Multi-Attribute Vulnerability Criticality Analysis (MAVCA) model for impact estimation and prioritised remediation is presented. This offer a new approach for combining three major attributes: vulnerability severities influenced by environmental factors, the attack probabilities relative to the vulnerabilities, and functional dependencies attributed to vulnerability host components. A miniature ICS testbed evaluation illustrates the usability of the model for determining the weakest link and setting security priority in the ICS. This work can help create speedy and proactive security response. The metrics derived in this work can serve as sub-metrics inputs to a larger quantitative security metrics taxonomy; and can be integrated into the security risk assessment scheme of a larger distributed system

Safety-Critical Systems and Agile Development: A Mapping Study

In the last decades, agile methods had a huge impact on how software is developed. In many cases, this has led to significant benefits, such as quality and speed of software deliveries to customers. However, safety-critical systems have widely been dismissed from benefiting from agile methods. Products that include safety critical aspects are therefore faced with a situation in which the development of safety-critical parts can significantly limit the potential speed-up through agile methods, for the full product, but also in the non-safety critical parts. For such products, the ability to develop safety-critical software in an agile way will generate a competitive advantage. In order to enable future research in this important area, we present in this paper a mapping of the current state of practice based on {a mixed method approach}. Starting from a workshop with experts from six large Swedish product development companies we develop a lens for our analysis. We then present a systematic mapping study on safety-critical systems and agile development through this lens in order to map potential benefits, challenges, and solution candidates for guiding future research.Comment: Accepted at Euromicro Conf. on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications 2018, Prague, Czech Republi

A new measure of conservation value combining rarity and ecological diversity: a case study with light trap collected caddisflies (Insecta: Trichoptera)

The objective of the present study was to analyse the conservation importance of streams, rivers and lakes for maintaining caddistly assemblages of Hungarian localities. Light traps ensured comparable catches of caddisflies from different aquatic habitats. A total of 245,363 individuals belonging to 152 species collected from 23 localities over the flight period were included in the analysis. Conservation value of caddistly assemblages was evaluated on the basis of a newly developed Rarity and Ecological Diversity (RED)-index expressing ecological diversity and the average rarity of caddistlies in Hungarian localities. The results showed that streams were the most suitable habitats for maintaining rare caddisfly species in diverse assemblages, while rivers had the lowest conservation importance

Setting competitiveness indicators using BSC and ANP

[EN] In this paper a new approach to assess companies' competitiveness performance in an efficient and reliable way is presented. It introduces a rigorous methodology, based on multi-criteria techniques, which seeks to assist managers of companies within a specific industrial sector in providing information about their relative position in order to define improvement action plans. The approach combines the use of the analytic network process (ANP) method with the balanced scorecard (BSC) to achieve competitiveness indicators. The ANP method allows the aggregation of experts judgments on each of the selected indicators used into one company competitiveness index (CCI). To demonstrate the goodness of the methodology, a case study of the plastic sector of Venezuela has been carried out. Three companies have been analysed using the CCI proposed. The participating experts agreed that the methodology is useful and an improvement from current competitiveness measurement techniques. They found the results obtained coherent and the use of resources significantly less than in other methods.Poveda Bautista, R.; Baptista, DC.; García Melón, M. (2012). Setting competitiveness indicators using BSC and ANP. International Journal of Production Research. 50(17):4738-4752. doi:10.1080/00207543.2012.657964S47384752501

Electronic information sharing in local government authorities: Factors influencing the decision-making process

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in International Journal of Information Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are mainly characterised as information-intensive organisations. To satisfy their information requirements, effective information sharing within and among LGAs is necessary. Nevertheless, the dilemma of Inter-Organisational Information Sharing (IOIS) has been regarded as an inevitable issue for the public sector. Despite a decade of active research and practice, the field lacks a comprehensive framework to examine the factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) among LGAs. The research presented in this paper contributes towards resolving this problem by developing a conceptual framework of factors influencing EIS in Government-to-Government (G2G) collaboration. By presenting this model, we attempt to clarify that EIS in LGAs is affected by a combination of environmental, organisational, business process, and technological factors and that it should not be scrutinised merely from a technical perspective. To validate the conceptual rationale, multiple case study based research strategy was selected. From an analysis of the empirical data from two case organisations, this paper exemplifies the importance (i.e. prioritisation) of these factors in influencing EIS by utilising the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. The intent herein is to offer LGA decision-makers with a systematic decision-making process in realising the importance (i.e. from most important to least important) of EIS influential factors. This systematic process will also assist LGA decision-makers in better interpreting EIS and its underlying problems. The research reported herein should be of interest to both academics and practitioners who are involved in IOIS, in general, and collaborative e-Government, in particular

Developing a New Approach to Road Planning in Thailand: Application of Link & Place to a Whole Nation

National and local road planning in Thailand is based on a framework that has remained largely unchanged for decades, and originates from a time period when the focus was on designing for a general growth in private car traffic and freight traffic. Since then, there has been a growing focus on multi-modality, on sustainability and on recognising the role of roads in a wider urban and rural place-making and environmental context. The thesis critically assesses the continued relevance of the current national road classification system and reviews a wide range of alternative classifications that have been proposed or adopted in different countries. It concludes that an alternative road classification system, Link & Place, has the potential to provide the basis of a new planning framework in Thailand and sets out to explore the implications of adopting this approach, in road ownership, funding and scheme prioritisation, both conceptually and at a practical level. Part A reviews international approaches to road classification and to road planning, and then examines both current national and sub-national planning frameworks in Thailand, based on literature/document reviews and interviews with key professionals in different government agencies and at various spatial levels. It concludes with an assessment of the strengths and limitations of the current planning procedures, and identifies key research gaps that are addressed in the remainder of the thesis. Part B considers how Link & Place could address the problems identified in part A and examines implications for road ownership and funding arrangements, and for performance measurement, problem identification and scheme prioritisation. The approach is tested empirically in a case study area, and further professional interviews are conducted to obtain local and national views on the applicability of this proposed approach. The final chapter critically assess what has been achieved and makes research and policy recommendations. The findings show that the road classification method based on Link & Place could be applied in a national context. Link & Place also offers a coordinated approach that brings administrative arrangements, funding, and performance measurement together, which could help build institutional capacity in sustainable road planning that is generally much needed in the global south