Revenue management of airport car parks in continuous time

We study the revenue management (RM) problem encountered in airport car parks, with the primary objective to maximize revenues under a continuous-time framework. The implementation of pre-booking systems for airport car parks has spread rapidly around the world and pre-booking is now available in most major airports. Currently, most RM practises in car parks are simple adjustments of those developed for hotels, exploiting the similarities between the two industries. However, airport car parks have a distinct setting where the price per day of a parking space is heavily discounted by the length of stay (LoS) of the booking. This is because the customer decision tends to be made after the length of the trip is already set, and it becomes a choice between parking or alternative modes of transport. Consequently, the LoS becomes a critical variable for revenue optimization. Since customers are able to book the parking by the minute, the resulting state space is very large, making a conventional network solution intractable . Instead, decomposed single-resource problems need to be considered. Here we develop a bid-price control strategy to manage the bookings and propose novel approaches to define such bid prices depending on the LoS, which could be utilized in real-time RM algorithms. Managing stochastic car park bookings by LoS in the decomposed single-resource approximation allowed us to achieve within 5% of the expected revenues for a multi-resource approximation, with a fraction of the computational effort. When expected demand exceeds the available parking capacity, the method increases the revenues by up to 45% relative to the first come, first served acceptance policy

The Future of Gwydir: Community Engagement 2015-16

In mid-2015 Gwydir Shire Council engaged the Centre for Local Government at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS:CLG) to conduct workshops with Council, a deliberative panel, and a community survey exploring the financial sustainability of Council and future service delivery in the local area

Commodifying urban space : the case of branded housing projects in Istanbul, Turkey

Since the 1970s, cities have become core areas for neoliberal restructuring strategies, policies and processes (Peck et al., 2009). Brenner et al. (2010) stress that different neoliberalization practices share the ambition “to intensify commodification in all realms of social life” (Aalbers 2013, 1054). In addition, prominent critical scholars including Lefebvre, Harvey and Castells agree upon the fact that “capitalist cities are not only arenas in which commodification occurs; they are themselves intensively commodified” (Brenner, Marcuse, and Mayer 2009, 178). The research argues that commodification of urban space is deepening under neoliberal urbanisation by expanding the commodity realm into spatial practice (Lefebvre, 1990), and by producing simultaneously its enabling mechanisms. It grounds this argument by investigating commodification through the critical case study of branded housing projects developed in Istanbul, Turkey. Housing enclaves have been expanding globally as part of neoliberal urbanisation and, as a particular version of contemporary housing enclaves, branded housing projects have been developed in Turkey since the early 2000s, following the intensification of neoliberal restructuring processes. Branded housing projects are housing enclaves produced under certain brands and provide key urban services within the confines of the projects. Housing enclaves and branded housing projects, in particular, present a representative case for various dynamics of commodification of urban space under neoliberal urbanisation. The research undertakes this critical case study by analysing spatial practice of branded housing projects, to investigate deepening of commodification of urban space, together with analysing discursive formation and development processes of this phenomenon to investigate enabling mechanisms for this commodification. As a result, the research proposes the concept of hyper-commodification of urban space to explain multi-layered deepening of commodification of urban space under neoliberal urbanisation as its main contribution. The research also contributes to methodology by proposing a mixed method strategy bringing critical disourse analysis from communication studies and spatial analysis from urban studies together

Sustainable forest management

This article presents a case study of sustainable forest management at Thirlmere Reservoir in the Lake District. The interaction between forest and water resources, and the value of the surrounding landscape, makes Thirlmere an excellent location for demonstrating modern approaches in sustainable forestry. Today, forests are managed for a variety of purposes: environmental, economic and social. This case study shows that such management requires a range of geographical understanding, and illustrates the synoptic approach required at A2

Impact of parking types & time restrictions on urban parking choice behaviour

Urban parking policy formation comprises community consultation, business interest, political interest and traffic safety aspects. Local governments in Sydney have parking policies which are generally evaluated qualitatively. This thesis studies the parking choice of individuals in Burwood urban centre which is located in the inner-west of Sydney, Australia. It explores the Burwood town centre s existing parking policy quantitatively using econometric models. Past and recent parking literature have labelled experiments comparing specific parking locations and parking types. This research advances the parking literature by deriving the attributes weight such as parking search time, walk time among the short-term and all-day parking by conducting an unlabeled stated choice experiment. Based on the revealed preference survey conducted in 2011, an econometric parking choice model is developed that includes various factors which influence car driver s selection of different parking types at Burwood town centre. The results show that influence of parking price is found to be consistently significant in all parking types. Individuals are willing to pay more for on-street parking, especially which are located near restaurants, school zones, shops and services. The second study, which was conducted in June 2015, comprised stated preference survey with socio-demographic attributes. Though pricing is known to impact parking choice, there is limited understanding of the impact of parking time restriction on parking choice. This survey evaluates the difference between the willingness to pay for short-term parking and all-day parking. A mixed logit model was developed to account for the preference heterogeneity among the users. The proposed model also accounts for walking time to destination and parking search time. The findings reveal that individuals have higher Willingness to Pay to reduce their search time for short-term parking as compared to all-day parking. Furthermore, for both parking restrictions type, parkers are willing to pay more to reduce the parking search time compared to walk time. The research outcomes of this thesis would help policy makers to evaluate the existing parking restriction s location, pricing and future carpark development locations. These would not only help in easing urban traffic congestion on roads, by significantly reducing drivers cruising for parking space, but also help local governments raise additional funds which can be used in the maintenance and development of carparks

Information systems audit report

Applications are software programs that facilitate an organisation’s key business processes. Typical administrative processes dependent on software applications include finance, human resources, licensing and billing. Applications also facilitate specialist functions that are peculiar and essential to individual entities. Each year we review a selection of key applications that agencies rely on to deliver services. Our focus is the application controls designed to ensure the complete and accurate processing of data from input to output. Failings or weaknesses in these controls have the potential to directly impact other organisations and the public. Impacts range from delays in service to possible fraudulent activity and financial loss.&nbsp

The Role of the State in the Commodification of Urban Space: The Case of Branded Housing Projects, Istanbul

Globally, cities have been experiencing neoliberal urbanization processes since the 1970s, while also contributing to the production of the neoliberal condition per se. The neoliberal state plays a core role in such processes, which have deepened the commodification of urban space via various mechanisms such as the privatization of public land and key urban infrastructure. This article critically investigates the direct involvement of the neoliberal state in the commodification of urban space by focusing on its triple role as a restructuring mechanism, a land developer and a volume housing developer in Turkey. The research develops and applies a theoretical framework based on Lefebvre’s production of space and Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. The paper examines the development of branded housing projects, which are private neighbourhoods, by analysing national legislative and organizational changes leading to the production of this type of development and illustrates this using four example projects in Istanbul. The paper contributes to the international evidence of the variegated characteristics of the neoliberal state in relation to urban development, and the neoliberal state’s role in the accumulation of capital in contemporary capitalism