42 research outputs found
Sustainable Real Estate: Management, Assessment and Innovations
Production and consumption activities have determined a weakness of the sustainable real estate economy. The main problems are the subordination of public decision making, which is subjected to pressure from big companies; inefficient appraisal procedures; excessive use of financial leverage in investment projects; the atypical nature of markets; income positions in urban transformations; and the financialization of real estate markets, with widespread negative effects. A delicate role in these complex problems is assigned to real estate appraisal activities, called to make value judgments on real estate goods and investment projects, the prices of which are often formed in atypical real estate markets, giving ever greater importance to sustainable development and transformation issues. This Special Issue is dedicated to developing and disseminating knowledge and innovations related to most recent real estate evaluation methodologies applied in the fields of architecture and civil, building, environmental, and territorial engineering. Suitable works include studies on econometric models, sustainable building management, building costs, risk management and real estate appraisal, mass appraisal methods applied to real estate properties, urban and land economics, transport economics, the application of economics and financial techniques to real estate markets, the economic valuation of real estate investment projects, the economic effects of building transformations or projects on the environment, and sustainable real estate
Innovator - Fall/Winter 2013
1 - THE BIG PICTURE
8 - WHATâS NOW
16 - PINBOARD
17 - MIKE MADE THAT Mike Leonard, academic dean of the School of Design and Engineering, gives us the inside story about his role in the invention of just about everything.
20 - MEET THE NEW BOARD CHAIR Entrepreneur and education advocate, Eileen Martinson â86, brings her passion and expertise for smart technology and education to her new role as Board Chair.
24 - THE DEC CENTER Built to evolve as curricula changes, the DEC Center has quickly become the campusâ new academic hub.
26 - CHARTING THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION The landscape of higher education is shifting and PhilaU is at the forefront of this movement, and is, in many cases, leading the way.
30 - WHATâS AN IDEA WORTH?Crowd funding is changing the paradigm for how ideas get to the market, giving consumers a say in what movements can get funding and attentionâno matter how small.
34 - INNOVATION FOR THE SOCIAL GOOD PhilaU student innovations are changing lives for the better, at home, in Philadelphia and abroad.
38 - PHILANTHROPY
40 - CLASS NOTES & EVENTS
48 - WHATâS NEX
Port competitiveness in North East Asia : an integrated fuzzy approach to expert evaluations
Despite the fact that the Northeast Asia (NEA) region, which had four of the top five and
20 of the top 30 container ports in the world in 2003, can be regarded as holding a central
position in liner shipping and the handling of container cargo volumes, very little research
has been done into the evaluation of its port competitiveness (EPC). For this reason, the
EPC in NEA can be regarded as a problematic and urgent issue to be solved, and worthy of
academic attention.
From this aspect, this research set out to attempt to address the above issue by means of
utilizing expert knowledge. However, the EPC contains problems of complex multipleattributes
and multiple-hierarchies (CMAMH). In addition, difficulties concerning certain
characteristics of evaluation such as complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity are also
involved. To deal with such problems, in this research, the employment of integrated fuzzy
evaluation (IFE) as a methodology was decided upon.
As a result of the adaptation of the methodology, certain indications from this research to
the theory and practice for container ports have emerged and are clearly identifiable. With
regard to theory, this study has contributed to theoretical development significantly in four
ways. First, the factors and taxonomy of port competitiveness for the container ports in
NEA have been provided for the first time. Second, this is the first integrated approach for
the EPC in NEA, the most competitive area in the world. Third, this research was also the
first to attempt extracting critical weak points and/or influential factors affecting current
port competitiveness. Finally, the adoption of IFE made it possible for the first time to
uncover the interactive relationships between the competing container ports.
In terms of practice, this research has also provided certain contributions of utmost
importance. First of all, the study has provided a suggestion for the most recent port
ranking in respect of port competitiveness. Moreover, changes in competitiveness power,
which are dynamically and interactively affected by the relationship between the ports,
have been successfully estimated and suggested. Thus, such changes in the
competitiveness in NEA can now be easily forecasted by port actors
A web-based collaborative decision making system for construction project teams using fuzzy logic
In the construction industry, the adoption of concurrent engineering principles
requires the development of effective enabling IT tools. Such tools need to address
specific areas of need in the implementation of concurrent engineering in
construction. Collaborative decision-making is an important area in this regard. A
review of existing works has shown that none of the existing approaches to
collaborative decision-making adequately addresses the needs of distributed
construction project teams. The review also reveals that fuzzy logic offers great
potential for application to collaborative decision-making.
This thesis describes a Web-based collaborative decision-making system for
construction project teams using fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic is applied to tackle
uncertainties and imprecision during the decision-making process. The prototype
system is designed as Web-based to cope with the difficulty in the case where project
team members are geographically distributed and physical meetings are
inconvenient/or expensive. The prototype was developed into a Web-based software
using Java and allows a virtual meeting to be held within a construction project team
via a client-server system. The prototype system also supports objectivity in group
decision-making and the approach encapsulated in the prototype system can be used
for generic decision-making scenarios.
The system implementation revealed that collaborative decision-making within a
virtual construction project team can be significantly enhanced by the use of a fuzzybased
approach. A generic scenario and a construction scenario were used to evaluate
the system and the evaluation confirmed that the system does proffer many benefits in
facilitating collaborative decision-making in construction.
It is concluded that the prototype decision-making system represents a unique and
innovative approach to collaborative decision-making in construction project teams. It
not only contributes to the implementation of concurrent engineering in construction,
but also it represents a substantial advance over existing approaches
Current Topics on Risk Analysis: ICRA6 and RISK2015 Conference
Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
Current Topics on Risk Analysis: ICRA6 and RISK2015 Conference
ArtĂculos presentados en la International Conference on Risk Analysis ICRA 6/RISK
2015, celebrada en Barcelona del 26 al 29 de mayo de 2015.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version