Updating, Upgrading, Refining, Calibration and Implementation of Trade-Off Analysis Methodology Developed for INDOT

As part of the ongoing evolution towards integrated highway asset management, the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT), through SPR studies in 2004 and 2010, sponsored research that developed an overall framework for asset management. This was intended to foster decision support for alternative investments across the program areas on the basis of a broad range of performance measures and against the background of the various alternative actions or spending amounts that could be applied to the several different asset types in the different program areas. The 2010 study also developed theoretical constructs for scaling and amalgamating the different performance measures, and for analyzing the different kinds of trade-offs. The research products from the present study include this technical report which shows how theoretical underpinnings of the methodology developed for INDOT in 2010 have been updated, upgraded, and refined. The report also includes a case study that shows how the trade-off analysis framework has been calibrated using available data. Supplemental to the report is Trade-IN Version 1.0, a set of flexible and easy-to-use spreadsheets that implement the tradeoff framework. With this framework and using data at the current time or in the future, INDOT’s asset managers are placed in a better position to quantify and comprehend the relationships between budget levels and system-wide performance, the relationships between different pairs of conflicting or non-conflicting performance measures under a given budget limit, and the consequences, in terms of system-wide performance, of funding shifts across the management systems or program areas

Towards the Evolution of Novel Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines

Renewable and sustainable energy is one of the most important challenges currently facing mankind. Wind has made an increasing contribution to the world's energy supply mix, but still remains a long way from reaching its full potential. In this paper, we investigate the use of artificial evolution to design vertical-axis wind turbine prototypes that are physically instantiated and evaluated under approximated wind tunnel conditions. An artificial neural network is used as a surrogate model to assist learning and found to reduce the number of fabrications required to reach a higher aerodynamic efficiency, resulting in an important cost reduction. Unlike in other approaches, such as computational fluid dynamics simulations, no mathematical formulations are used and no model assumptions are made.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Methodological review of multicriteria optimization techniques: aplications in water resources

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is an umbrella approach that has been applied to a wide range of natural resource management situations. This report has two purposes. First, it aims to provide an overview of advancedmulticriteriaapproaches, methods and tools. The review seeks to layout the nature of the models, their inherent strengths and limitations. Analysis of their applicability in supporting real-life decision-making processes is provided with relation to requirements imposed by organizationally decentralized and economically specific spatial and temporal frameworks. Models are categorized based on different classification schemes and are reviewed by describing their general characteristics, approaches, and fundamental properties. A necessity of careful structuring of decision problems is discussed regarding planning, staging and control aspects within broader agricultural context, and in water management in particular. A special emphasis is given to the importance of manipulating decision elements by means ofhierarchingand clustering. The review goes beyond traditionalMCDAtechniques; it describes new modelling approaches. The second purpose is to describe newMCDAparadigms aimed at addressing the inherent complexity of managing water ecosystems, particularly with respect to multiple criteria integrated with biophysical models,multistakeholders, and lack of information. Comments about, and critical analysis of, the limitations of traditional models are made to point out the need for, and propose a call to, a new way of thinking aboutMCDAas they are applied to water and natural resources management planning. These new perspectives do not undermine the value of traditional methods; rather they point to a shift in emphasis from methods for problem solving to methods for problem structuring. Literature review show successfully integrations of watershed management optimization models to efficiently screen a broad range of technical, economic, and policy management options within a watershed system framework and select the optimal combination of management strategies and associated water allocations for designing a sustainable watershed management plan at least cost. Papers show applications in watershed management model that integrates both natural and human elements of a watershed system including the management of ground and surface water sources, water treatment and distribution systems, human demands,wastewatertreatment and collection systems, water reuse facilities,nonpotablewater distribution infrastructure, aquifer storage and recharge facilities, storm water, and land use