Fuzzy Optimization of Option Pricing Model and Its Application in Land Expropriation

Option pricing is irreversible, fuzzy, and flexible. The fuzzy measure which is used for real option pricing is a useful supplement to the traditional real option pricing method. Based on the review of the concepts of the mean and variance of trapezoidal fuzzy number and the combination with the Carlsson-Fuller model, the trapezoidal fuzzy variable can be used to represent the current price of land expropriation and the sale price of land on the option day. Fuzzy Black-Scholes option pricing model can be constructed under fuzzy environment and problems also can be solved and discussed through numerical examples

Project Risk Management in Public-Private Partnerships: An Equitable Risk Allocation Decision Model based on Psychometrics

Public-private partnership (P3) procurement has grown into an internationally acclaimed means of achieving value for money while procuring public infrastructure projects. Unlike conventional infrastructure procurement models, P3s transfer a considerable amount of project risk away from the public sector to the private sector. During a long, methodical procurement phase, public and private partners reach a final risk allocation agreement over forecasted risks regarding a project’s potential design, build, finance, operation, and maintenance. This thesis begins with exploring the P3 procurement phase, highlighting relevant project actors and stages leading up to the signing of a final contract. The concepts of risk and project risk management are studied under the assumption that P3 project partners operate under a principal-agent relationship, where public authorities are tasked with aligning private partner motivations with their own motivations through contractual incentives. A core literature database provides 54 identified P3 project risks along with their suggested sectorial allocations. Exactly half – 27 – of these risks are deemed contentious because they are not unanimously allocated to a given sector within the database. These 27 contentious P3 project risks were subjected to an expert questionnaire asking Canadian practitioners to allocate them to a preferred sector based on a five-point semantic differential scale. The respondent pool was equally comprised of public and private sector practitioners from an array of specialized occupations relevant to P3 project risk management. Expert input was subjected to various quantitative methods that measured: (i) levels of agreement within sectors over risk allocation preferences, (ii) levels of agreement between sectors over risk allocation preferences, and (iii) overall risk allocation preferences based on the five-point semantic differential scale. It is found that: (i) both sectors enjoy strong levels of agreement over risk allocation preferences, (ii) 6 of 27 risks show statistically significant levels of disagreement between sectors over their allocation preferences, and (iii) there are risks that should generally be borne by either the public or private sector pending individual P3 project circumstances. The research findings should enable scholars and practitioners alike to establish more concrete conceptions of where P3 project risks should generally be allocated pending circumstantial conditions unique to different P3 projects. Where risks cannot be broadly allocated due to circumstantial conditions, a review of the study’s final risk allocation model provides contextual considerations that influence their allocation. Concluding sections acknowledge this study’s methodological and theoretical limitations. Recommendations for future studies to consider, both methodological and theoretical, are provided

Cities versus agriculture: revisiting intersectoral water transfers, potential gains and conflicts

Water scarcity / Water demand / Water transfer / Water use / Water supply / Water allocation / Environmental effects / Water market

Conducting a feasibility study for generating power from renewable energy resources and utilizing High Voltage Direct Current for interconnection in the Middle East and North Africa

Electricity consumption is on the rise as the global population is increasing. The need of energy has been discussed in length over the years. Oil and gas have been the primary resource for generators fuel. As oil and gas are a finite resource, an alternative resource that does not harm the environment is needed to generate energy. The Middle East and North Africa have a huge potential for using solar and wind energy to generate electricity as MENA region has one of the highest levels on solar irradiation. A new system of transferring the power through the MENA region is proposed. HVDC can be utilized to transfer energy over large distance with minimal losses where it is used for an interconnection grid between the MENA countries. Moreover, factors affecting future project, in the MENA region, such as the political atmosphere of the MENA countries, and how it affects the decision of constructing a project are analyzed. Secondly, the infrastructure and readiness of the MENA countries toward building Renewable energy and HVDC substation. Thirdly, risks and constrains of implementing these projects. Fourthly, the financial cost of the RE and HVDC projects. Fifthly, how social media and news orient the people thinking and decision making. Sixthly, existing rules and regulations in the energy sector are investigated. Finally, recommendations were given to each factor to ensure the smooth transition to produce green energy by utilizing renewable energy

Highway Development Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Analysis, Critique and Advancement

While decision-making under uncertainty is a major universal problem, its implications in the field of transportation systems are especially enormous; where the benefits of right decisions are tremendous, the consequences of wrong ones are potentially disastrous. In the realm of highway systems, decisions related to the highway configuration (number of lanes, right of way, etc.) need to incorporate both the traffic demand and land price uncertainties. In the literature, these uncertainties have generally been modeled using the Geometric Brownian Motion (GBM) process, which has been used extensively in modeling many other real life phenomena. But few scholars, including those who used the GBM in highway configuration decisions, have offered any rigorous justification for the use of this model. This thesis attempts to offer a detailed analysis of various aspects of transportation systems in relation to decision-making. It reveals some general insights as well as a new concept that extends the notion of opportunity cost to situations where wrong decisions could be made. Claiming deficiency of the GBM model, it also introduces a new formulation that utilizes a large and flexible parametric family of jump models (i.e., Lévy processes). To validate this claim, data related to traffic demand and land prices were collected and analyzed to reveal that their distributions, heavy-tailed and asymmetric, do not match well with the GBM model. As a remedy, this research used the Merton, Kou, and negative inverse Gaussian Lévy processes as possible alternatives. Though the results show indifference in relation to final decisions among the models, mathematically, they improve the precision of uncertainty models and the decision-making process. This furthers the quest for optimality in highway projects and beyond

NEGOTIATION-BASED RISK MANAGEMENT FOR PPP-BOT INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Risk Management in Environment, Production and Economy

The term "risk" is very often associated with negative meanings. However, in most cases, many opportunities can present themselves to deal with the events and to develop new solutions which can convert a possible danger to an unforeseen, positive event. This book is a structured collection of papers dealing with the subject and stressing the importance of a relevant issue such as risk management. The aim is to present the problem in various fields of application of risk management theories, highlighting the approaches which can be found in literature