Airport surface access in the UK: A management perspective

Air passenger traffic in the UK has increased significantly over the last 30 years, and is forecast to continue to grow for the foreseeable future. A key associated challenge for airports involves the management of airport surface access. Currently, airport surface access in the UK is heavily reliant on trips by private car, which has resulted in congestion on local road networks and raised levels of pollution from vehicle emissions. The paper offers an airport management perspective on airport surface access in the UK. Semi-structured interviews with key personnel responsible for surface access management at 14 UK airports revealed a wide variety of surface access issues and management policies. The need to reduce the share of journeys made by private car is identified as a key issue, with a particular focus on reducing ‘kiss-and-fly’ journeys for passengers. Whilst reducing private car journeys may yield environmental benefits, such strategies are largely at odds with substantial commercial pressures to maximise the revenue potential of airport parking

Submission to the Attorney-General’s Department on the Exposure Draft Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As has been stated in previous submissions to Government, the Associations acknowledge Government’s desire to protect telecommunications infrastructure and the information transmitted across it from unauthorised access and interference. Indeed, Australian Carriers, Carriage Service Providers and Carriage Service Intermediaries (C/CSPs) and other industry participants have an active and vested interest in ensuring that the nation’s networks and communications infrastructure are robust and resistant to external attack. Industry is, however, unable to support the proposed Telecommunications Sector Security Reform (TSSR), as described in the exposure draft legislation, for reasons including that it constitutes regulatory ‘over-reach’ in the form of a framework that: will face challenges protecting communications networks, i.e. it will not deliver the increased protection the proposed reforms are aiming to achieve; is out of step with regulatory approaches to protecting networks adopted in other countries, including the UK, USA and Canada, thereby putting Australia at a disadvantage in fighting cyber threats and undermine Industry’s ability to support these important peers; hands unjustifiably significant additional and intrusive powers to Government and places regulatory burdens on Industry that will undermine its ability to protect against and respond to cyber attacks; risks being highly disruptive to the deployment of new network technologies that are more robust in preventing cyber attacks; will be a significant deterrent to technological investment in Australia; imposes additional costs on Industry and (ultimately) consumers undermining Australia’s competitiveness at a time when digital innovation is an important area for growth for Australia; fails to offer protection/indemnity to C/CSPs against the risk of civil litigation through ‘safe harbours’, thereby limiting information sharing and the ability to quickly respond to threats and to jointly engage in preventative action; carries the risk that competition in infrastructure supply will be reduced, to the detriment of all Australians; lacks transparency; and fails to provide adequate consultative mechanisms and avenues of appeal

Socio-economic assessment of two small-scale irrigation schemes in Adami Tullu Jido Kombolcha Woreda, Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia

The sustainability of irrigated agriculture is questioned and the challenge is to increase simultaneously land and water productivity in the face of the limited availability of land and water in the CRV, the Central Rift Valley. The aim of this research is to assess the social-economic performance of two communitybased small-scale irrigation schemes in Adami Tullu Jido Kombolcha Woreda (ATJK) and to identify options to improve irrigation performance and resource managemen

From Coase to Collaborative Property Decision-Making: Green Economy Innovation

This Article considers the advantages and disadvantages of market-based program design, natural gas regulation, and enhanced international understanding. Transitioning to a green economy involves dedicating efforts towards environmentally sound energy innovation. RGGI, natural gas, and climate change represent sustainability challenges. Optimizing cooperative transboundary green innovation can facilitate inclusive decision making just as public participation by civil society can help economies transition to environmentally sound energy use. Building upon progress made in the human lights and environment fields can advance both and enhance resilience

Turning Brownfields into Jobfields

A handbook for practitioners and citizens on making brownfields development work

A study of System Interface Sets (SIS) for the host, target and integration environments of the Space Station Program (SSP)

System interface sets (SIS) for large, complex, non-stop, distributed systems are examined. The SIS of the Space Station Program (SSP) was selected as the focus of this study because an appropriate virtual interface specification of the SIS is believed to have the most potential to free the project from four life cycle tyrannies which are rooted in a dependance on either a proprietary or particular instance of: operating systems, data management systems, communications systems, and instruction set architectures. The static perspective of the common Ada programming support environment interface set (CAIS) and the portable common execution environment (PCEE) activities are discussed. Also, the dynamic perspective of the PCEE is addressed

Bus rapid transit

Effective public transit is central to development. For the vast majority of developing city residents, public transit is the only practical means to access employment, education, and public services, especially when such services are beyond the viable distance of walking or cycling. Unfortunately, the current state of public transit services in developing cities often does little to serve the actual mobility needs of the population. Bus services are too often unreliable, inconvenient and dangerous. In response, transport planners and public officials have sometimes turned to extremely costly mass transit alternatives such as rail-based metros. Due to the high costs of rail infrastructure, cities can only construct such systems over a few kilometres in a few limited corridors. The result is a system that does not meet the broader transport needs of the population. Nevertheless, the municipality ends up with a long-term debt that can affect investment in more pressing areas such as health, education, water, and sanitation. However, there is an alternative between poor public transit service and high municipal debt. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) can provide high-quality, metro-like transit service at a fraction of the cost of other options. This document provides municipal officials, non-governmental organizations, consultants, and others with an introduction to the concept of BRT as well as a step-by-step process for successfully planning a BRT system

The environmental performance of commercial buildings

At the request of the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, the Assistant Treasurer asked the Commission to undertake a research study examining the performance of commercial buildings and analyse any impediments to better performance of such buildings and how to overcome them. The study was foreshadowed by the Minister in May 1999 when announcing the Building and Construction Industries Action Agenda.environmental performance - commercial buildings - building - public good - greenhouse effect - energy efficiency - contractors - construction - renovation - performance standards - environment

A Model for Emergency Service of VoIP through Certification and Labeling

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) will transform many aspects of traditional telephony service, including the technology, the business models, and the regulatory constructs that govern such service. Perhaps not unexpectedly, this transformation is generating a host of technical, business, social, and policy problems. In attempting to respond to these problems, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could mandate obligations or specific solutions to VoIP policy issues; however, it is instead looking first to industry initiatives focused on the key functionality that users have come to expect of telecommunications services. High among this list of desired functionality is user access to emergency services for purposes of summoning fire, medical, and law enforcement agencies. Such services were traditionally required to be implemented (and subsequently were implemented) through state and federal regulations. An emergency service capability is a critical social concern, making it particularly important for the industry to propose viable solutions for promoting VoIP emergency services before regulators are compelled to mandate a solution. Reproducing emergency services in the VoIP space has proven to be a considerable task, mainly due to the wide and diverse variety of VoIP implementations and implementers. While technical and business communities have, in fact, made considerable progress in this area, significant uncertainty and deployment problems still exist. The question we ask is this: Can an industry-based certification and labeling process credibly address social and policy expectations regarding emergency services and VoIP, thus avoiding the need for government regulation at this critical time? We hypothesize that the answer is “yes.” In answering this question, we developed a model for VoIP emergency service compliance through industry certification and device labeling. This model is intended to support a wide range of emergency service implementations while providing users with sufficient verification that the service will operate as anticipated. To this end, we first examine possible technical implementations for VoIP emergency services. Next, we summarize the theory of certification as self-regulation and examine several relevant examples. Finally, we synthesize a specific model for certification of VoIP emergency services. We believe that the model we describe provides both short-term and long-term opportunities. In the short term, an industry-driven effort to solve the current problem of VoIP emergency services, if properly structured and overseen as we suggest, should be both effective and efficient. In the long term, such a process can serve as a self-regulatory model that can be applied to social policy goals in the telecommunications industry, making it an important tool to have as the industry becomes increasingly diverse and heterogeneous