A Transdisciplinary Approach to Decision Support for Dams in the Northeastern U.S. with Hydropower Potential

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is the regulatory body that oversees non-federally owned dam operations in the United States. With more than 300 hydropower dams across the U.S. seeking FERC relicense between 2020 and 2029, and 135 of those dams within the Northeast region alone, it is prudent to anticipate and plan for such decision-making processes. Anyone may be involved in FERC relicensing; in fact, FERC solicits public comment and requires the licensee to hold a public hearing during the process. Parties may also elect to apply for legal intervenor status, allowing them a more formal entry into the relicensing process. However, there are two key barriers that may keep the public from participating in a dam decision-making process in an impactful way. The first of these barriers is access to information. Having access to the types of information that matters to FERC is important, because it allows the participant to communicate their support or concerns about the relicensing using the language of the process. In particular, participants other than the licensee may not have access to project economic information, so this is a focus in my research. The second barrier is capacity to participate in a way that impacts the process (i.e., institutional knowledge about what kinds of decision criteria (factors) and decision alternatives (project options), as well as relevant data, that FERC typically weighs in their decision making or has considered in the past). Actors not privy to license information (perhaps encountering difficulty in navigating the FERC eLibrary), lacking knowledge of FERC process conventions, or otherwise unfamiliar with hydropower dam schemes or operations have substantial hurdles preventing their effective participation. My research, situated in the sustainability science arena, addresses hydropower project cost and performance assessment and multi-criteria considerations for dam decision support. I lead the development and assessment of an online Dam Decision Support Tool aimed at addressing barriers to the hydropower dam decision-making process. My work demonstrates possibilities for tailoring decision tools to incorporate stakeholder perspectives into decision making about hydropower dams

Development, Implementation, and Tracking of Preventative Safety Metrics

What gets measured, gets improved. With respect to the safety and health of Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) employees, the primary metric used has been the OSHA recordable incident rate. This incident rate measures how often a Cabinet employee sustains an injury that demands more than basic first aid. This metric is important for understanding injury frequencies, but it does not assist with management of the safety, health, and overall well-being of KYTC personnel. Based on a review of leading safety indicators adopted by various industries, this study devised a comprehensive list of safety metrics the Cabinet will benefit from tracking. Metrics were evaluated, organized, weighted, and compiled into a three-tier scorecard that is used to assess performance at KYTC’s district, area, and executive levels. Five major dimensions of an effective safety program were identified: (1) management leadership and commitment, (2) employee engagement, (3) training and competence, (4) hazard identification and control, and (5) evaluation and improvement. Surveys of KYTC districts found that all metrics performed robustly, while stakeholders at executive levels usually assigned lower scores to the five dimensions. Employee engagement had the lowest score. The Cabinet will benefit from seeking out more opportunities to involve employees in the agency’s safety program. Equally, the study reiterates the value of gaining management buy-in, support, and leadership when working to eliminate incidents and injuries

Investment prioritizing in high tech industries based on SWARA-COPRAS approach

One of the symbols of developed countries is high tech industries. High tech industries have a large margin. One of the priorities of developing countries is the progress in this type of industries. The decisions about priority of developing an industry are so hard that seems it should be seen from different perspectives. This research is focused on decision and policy making in priority of high tech industries in Iran. Two MCDM methods are applied in this research for decision making in this area. SWARA for evaluating and weighting criteria and COPRAS for evaluating and ranking alternatives are applied. Eleven experts from different fields participated in this research to make decision with SWARA and COPRAS. Four high tech industries including Biomedical Micro Electromechanical Systems (BioMEMS), Nano Technology, Biotechnology, and Biomedical Engineering were selected for this research. These industries were selected based on the potential of Iran. Final result shows that Nanotechnology is at the top of priorities in Iran. Authors believe that this methodology can be useful in other issues in this and other areas of research

An integrated decision-making method for selecting machine tool guideways considering remanufacturability

As one of the most important components of machine tool, guideway has an important driving force to comprehensively improve the remanufacturability of machine tools. To select optimal guideway for machine tool remanufacturing, an integrated multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach that combines improved analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and connection degree-based technique of ranking preferences by similarity to the ideal solution (CD-TOPSIS) method is proposed. The improved AHP is employed to calculate the weights of each criterion and the CD-TOPSIS is adapted to complete the task of sorting; finally, the comprehensive evaluation of the alternatives is carried out. A case study, i.e. eight types of guideways, is illustrated to verify the proposed MCDM method. In addition, comparison with existing methods is performed to validate the effective and reliability for the proposed hybrid approach. Also, sensitivity analysis is provided to evaluate the robustness of the method. The final result shows the method provides reliable decision support for the selection of machine tool guideways for remanufacturing

HSE management system and efficiency evaluation of construction projects

The strategy of Belt and Road Initiative actively advocates the establishment of economic partnerships with countries along the belt and road, and makes infrastructure construction a field for preferential development. It provides good development opportunities for domestic and foreign engineering contracting enterprises. The "Strategic Implementation Guidance Document" mentions that infrastructure construction and operation should be green and efficient. However, most state owned engineering contracting enterprises do not attach importance to HSE management, which obviously affects the engineering efficiency and hinders the sustainable development of enterprises. However, China's engineering contracting enterprises pay less attention to HSE management, which obviously affects project efficiency and hinders the sustainable develop ment of enterprises. This study takes a typical large project contracting enterprise (Enterprise A) in China as the research object, adopts the SWOT analysis method, analyzes the weakness of project management at the organization level, and consummates th e organization level project HSE management system of the enterprise at the organization layer and the project layer. Through the enterprise interview, questionnaire design and investigation, this study puts forward the suitable indicators and methods of H SE management performance evaluation, and verifies the effectiveness of the methods through the empirical analysis of eight projects. Then, this study proposes incorporating the project HSE management performance into the comprehensive evaluation methods o f project efficiency. The empirical analysis shows that the HSE management system proposed in this study at the organization layer and at the project layer can improve the HSE management performance of the project. Project HSE management performance has a positive impact on project efficiency, that is, the more enterprises attach importance to project HSE management, the higher the degree of completion of project objectives. The above research results are helpful to improve project management system at the organizational level and enhance the competitiveness of project contracting enterprises.A estratégia da "Belt and Road Initiative" defende ativamente o estabelecimento de parcerias económicas com os países ao longo de uma determinada faixa e faz da construção de infraestruturas um campo preferencial para desenvolvimento. Este campo fornece boas oportunidades de desenvolvimento para as empresas de engenharia nacionais e estrangeiras. O "Documento de Orientação de Implementação Estratégica" menciona que a construção e operação de infraestruturas deve ser eficiente e sustentável. No entanto, a grande maioria das empresas públicas contratadas não atribuem a devida importância aos sistemas de gestão de saúde e segurança (HSE) o que, obviamente, afecta a eficiência da engenharia e dificulta o desenvolvimento sustentável das empresas. As empresas privadas chinesas de engenharia ignoram a gestão HSE o que, obviamente, afecta, também, a eficiência dos projetos de sustentabilidade das empresas. Neste trabalho foi considerada uma grande empresa Chinesa de contratação (Empresa A) na China como referência de pesquisa, que adota a análise swot, analisa as fraquezas na gestão de projetos ao nível da organização e consuma a gestão de projetos em HSE ao nível da organização e do projeto em si. Através de entrevistas, questionários e investigação, este projeto apresenta os indicadores e métodos a dequados de avaliação de desempenho e verifica a efetividade dos métodos através da análise empírica de oito projetos. Em suma, este projeto propõe incorporar métodos de avaliação da eficiência através dos indicadores de gestão do HSE. A análise empírica demonstrou que o sistema proposto de gestão HSE, ao nível da organização e de projeto, pode aumentar efetivamente a gestão de performance do HSE em projeto. A gestão da performance do projeto HSE teve um impacto positivo na eficiência do projeto, ou seja, quanto mais as empresas atribuirem importância à gestão de projetos HSE maior será o nível de conclusão dos objetivos sustentáveis do projeto. Os resultados deste projeto são úteis para melhorar o sistema de gestão de projetos ao nível organizacional e aum entar a competitividade das empresas na contratação de projectos

A risk mitigation framework for construction / asset management of real estate and infrastructure projects

The increasing demand on residential, office, retail, and services buildings as well as hotels and recreation has been encouraging investors from both private and public sectors to develop new communities and cities to meet the mixed demand in one location. These projects are huge in size, include several diversified functions, and are usually implemented over many years. The real estate projects’ master schedules are usually initiated at an early stage of development. The decision to start investing in infrastructure systems, that can ultimately serve fully occupied community or city, is usually taken during the early development stage. This applies to all services such as water, electricity, sewage, telecom, natural gas, roads, urban landscape and cooling and heating. Following the feasibility phase and its generated implementation schedule, the construction of the infrastructure system starts together with a number of real estate projects of different portfolios (retail, residential, commercial,…etc.). The development of the remaining real estate projects continues parallel to customer occupancy of the completed projects. The occurrence of unforeseen risk events, post completing the construction of infrastructure system, may force decision makers to react by relaxing the implementation of the remaining unconstructed projects within their developed communities. This occurs through postponing the unconstructed project and keeping the original feasibility-based sequence of projects unchanged. Decision makers may also change the sequence of implementing their projects where they may prioritize either certain portfolio or location zone above the other, depending on changes in the market demand conditions. The change may adversely impact the original planned profit in the original feasibility. The profit may be generated from either real estate portfolios and/or their serving Infrastructure system. The negative impact may occur due to possible delayed occupancy of the completed real estate projects which in turn reduces the services demand. This finally results in underutilization of the early implemented Infrastructure system. This research aims at developing a dynamic decision support prototype system to quantify impacts of unforeseen risks on the profitability of real estate projects as well as its infrastructure system in the cases of changing projects’ implementation schedules. It is also aimed to support decision makers with scheduled portfolio mix that maximizes their Expected Gross Profit (EGP) of real estate projects and their infrastructure system. The provided schedules can be either based on location zone or portfolio type to meet certain marketing conditions or even to respect certain relations between neighbor projects’ implementation constraints. In order to achieve the research objectives, a Risk Impact Mitigation (RIM) decision support system is developed. RIM consists mainly of four models, Real Estate Scheduling Optimization Model RESOM, Sustainable Landscape Optimization Model SLOM, District Cooling Optimization Model DCOM and Water Simulation Optimization Model WSOM. Integrated with the three Infrastructure specialized models SLOM, DCOM, WSOM, RESOM provides EGP values for individual Infrastructure systems. The three infrastructure models provide the demand profile that relate to a RESOM generated implementation schedule. RESOM then uses these profiles for calculating the profits using the projects’ capital expenditure and financial expenses. The three models included in this research (SLOM, DCOM and WSOM) relate to the urban landscape, district cooling and water systems respectively. RIM is applied on a large scale real estate development in Egypt. The development was subjected to difficult political and financial circumstances that were not forecasted while preparing original feasibility studies. RIM is validated using a questionnaire process. The questionnaire is distributed to 31 experts of different academic and professional background. RIM’s models provided expected results for different real life cases tested by experts as part of the validation process. The validation process indicated that RIM’s results are consistent, in compliance with expected results and is extremely useful and novel in supporting real estate decision makers in mitigating risk impacts on their profits. The validation process also indicated promising benefits and potential need for developed commercial version for future application within the industry

Multi-Criteria Decision Making for Medical Device Development

International audienceThe development of a new product is a complicated multi-stakeholder process with a significant risk of failure. This is particularly true in the medical device sector, where there are strict therapeutic, psychological, and normative constraints. This article presents a multi-criteria decision making process called “Define, Prioritize, Measure, and Aggregate” (DPMA). DPMA is designed to help engineering managers in decision making during the development process of new medical devices. The model is based on two sets of criteria linked to business and customer satisfaction. These criteria are weighted using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and group decision making (GDM) process. The performance of a medical device is measured according to each criterion. Furthermore, the final score of GO/NO GO alternatives are calculated with the simple additive weighting (SAW) method. A case study for the development of a new kind of femoral implant is presented to demonstrate the implementation of the DPMA process. This study shows that the application of the DPMA process during the design of a 3D printed femoral prosthesis provided engineering managers the key elements and green light to go ahead with the development of this medical device

Multi-criteria decision-making in whole process design

PhD ThesisIn recent years, the chemical and pharmaceutical industries have faced increased development times and costs with fewer novel chemicals being discovered. This has resulted in many companies focusing on innovative research and development as they consider this key to business success. In particular, a number of leading industrial organisations have adopted the principles of Whole Process Design (WPD). WPD considers the optimisation of the entire product development process, from raw materials to end product, rather than focusing on each individual unit operation. The complexity involved in the implementation of WPD requires rationalised decision-making, often with limited or uncertain information. This thesis assesses the most widely applied methods in Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) in conjunction with the results of two interviews and two questionnaires that identified the industrial requirements for decision-making during WPD. From the findings of this work, a novel decision-making methodology was proposed, the outcome of which allows a decision-maker to visually interpret their decision results with associated levels of uncertainty. To validate the proposed methodology, a software framework was developed that incorporates two other decision-making approaches, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité trois (ELECTRE III). The framework was then applied to a number of industrial case studies to validate the application of the proposed methodology.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Chemistry Innovatio

Sustainable Construction Engineering and Management

This Book is a Printed Edition of the Special Issue which covers sustainability as an emerging requirement in the fields of construction management, project management and engineering. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research articles that address the challenges and opportunities for sustainable construction in all its facets, including technical topics and specific operational or procedural solutions, as well as strategic approaches aimed at the project, company or industry level. Central to developments are smart technologies and sophisticated decision-making mechanisms that augment sustainable outcomes. The Special Issue was received with great interest by the research community and attracted a high number of submissions. The selection process sought to balance the inclusion of a broad representative spread of topics against research quality, with editors and reviewers settling on thirty-three articles for publication. The Editors invite all participating researchers and those interested in sustainable construction engineering and management to read the summary of the Special Issue and of course to access the full-text articles provided in the Book for deeper analyses