Environmental management system and electronic communication : Is it the need of the hour?

Implementation and certification of Environmental Management Systems (EMS) is a reality for many businesses. Communication with an organisation&rsquo;s stakeholders is a required element of any EMS. In the last five years companies have steadily moved towards integrating their different management systems, such as quality, environmental, and occupational health and safety, in an attempt to reduce their costs and increase efficiency. Legislation requires extensive reporting in each of these areas, so compliance is another important driver. During this period, communication by digital technology, or electronic communication, has gained prominence and acceptance amongst all groups of people including businesses primarily as a means to disseminate crucial EMS information to geographically diverse employees in a cost effective and instantaneous manner. Some perspectives have emerged to suggest that change processes in organisations may be hindered or helped in various ways through the application of digital technology in EMS. There are, however, gaps in the literature that document the impact and effectiveness of electronic communication amongst EMS stakeholders. In this paper we will discuss employees as one of the major stakeholders and whether the move to electronic communication has been assisting or hindering transformations in awareness and understanding of issues amongst employees. We highlight opportunities and challenges presented by an increased use of electronic communication in light of the environmental and climate change debates, which underpin EMS.</div

Mitigating the High Cost of ISO 14001 EMS Standard Certification: Lessons from Agribusiness Case Research

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) account for an estimated 90% of the world's economic activity, implying that environmental management strategies customized specifically for such organizations are important in a global environmental management initiative such as ISO 14001. The cost of third party ISO 14001 standard registration can be extremely high, and generally beyond the means of SMEs. Three dimensions to ISO 14001 EMS standard registration, which can substantially affect the cost associated with developing, implementing and obtaining ISO 14001 accreditation, were examined: i) whether the EMS implementation and registration process is direct or indirect; ii) how an organization can demonstrate compliance with ISO 14001 requirements; and iii)scale of the ISO 14001 certification process. In addition, case studies are used to highlight important ISO 14001 certification considerations, and assess how the organizations studied mitigated the high cost of ISO 14001 registration.International, ISO 14001, Small/medium interprises, Environmental entrepreneurship., Agribusiness, Environmental Economics and Policy,

Accelerating the EM algorithm by smoothing: A special case

AbstractThe standard em (estimate, maximize) algorithm exhibits very slow convergence. In the special test case where the underlying positive linear system has a unique solution, we describe two iterations, based on adaptively choosing the smoothing in the ems (estimate, maximize, smooth) algorithm, which accelerate the convergence of the em algorithm. The resulting algorithms, called adaptive ems (a-ems) algorithms, thus overcome the inaccuracy of ems while retaining its more rapid convergence and reduced overall computational cost

Cost-effectiveness and quality-of-life analysis of physician-staffed helicopter emergency medical services

Background: The long-term health outcomes and costs of helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) assistance remain uncertain. The aim of this study was to investigate the cost-effectiveness of HEMS assistance compared with emergency medical services (EMS). Methods: A prospective cohort study was performed at a level I trauma centre. Quality-of-life measurements were obtained at 2 years after trauma, using the EuroQol - Five Dimensions (EQ-5D) as generic measure to determine health status. Health outcomes and costs were combined into costs per quality-adjusted life year (QALY). Results: The study population receiving HEMS assistance was more severely injured than that receiving EMS assistance only. Over the 4-year study interval, HEMS assistance saved a total of 29 additional lives. No statistically significant differences in quality of life were found between assistance with HEMS or with EMS. Two years after trauma the mean EQ-5D utility score was 0.70 versus 0.71 respectively. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio for HEMS versus EMS was €28 327 per QALY. The sensitivity analysis showed a cost-effectiveness ratio between €16 000 and €62 000. Conclusion: In the Netherlands, the costs of HEMS assistance per QALY remain below the acceptance threshold. HEMS should therefore be considered as cost effective. Copyrigh

Using economic evaluation and preference elicitation methods to inform decisions about how best to reorganise services :a case study of the redesign of emergency medical services

PhD ThesisThe aim of this thesis was to evaluate the centralisation of emergency medical services (EMS) in different local hospitals into a single specialised emergency care hospital in terms of costs and quality of care. It also aimed to investigate preferences and trade-offs that individuals’ were willing to make to receive treatment at the centralised specialised emergency hospital. The economic evaluation method builds upon a systematic review of economic evaluation methods and types of economic evaluation that have been used to assess the performance of centralised healthcare specialities. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was used to investigate preferences for centralised EMS and the trade-offs individuals were willing to make to receive treatment at the centralised hospital. The DCE identified preferences for: shorter travel times to the hospital; shorter waiting times; fewer days in hospital; low risk of death; low risk of readmission; and outpatient follow-up care in local hospitals. However, people were willing to trade-off increased travel time and waiting time for higher quality of specialised emergency medical care in the centralised hospital. A Markov model was developed to evaluate the costs and effectiveness of centralisation of EMS compared with non-centralised care. Multiple sensitivity analyses were carried out to assess whether centralisation had an impact on cost, quality and cost-effectiveness over the short and longer term. The incremental cost per QALY at one year (deterministic estimate £1,004 per QALY) and 10 years (deterministic estimate £636 per QALY) were both well below the threshold used by the National Institute for Health and Care Health Excellence (£20,000-£30,000 per QALY). There were fewer deaths in the centralised EMS compared with noncentralised services (deterministic estimate: 31.47 fewer deaths at 1 year, 31.57 fewer deaths at 10 years). Discounting the costs and outcomes at different rates did not alter conclusions. The economic evaluation suggested that centralisation of EMS into fewer more specialised units could be cost-effective, although cost-effectiveness may vary in specific population sub-groups. Sub-group analyses suggest that centralised EMS would be more cost-effective for elderly patients, the most economically deprived patients and those presenting with diseases of the circulatory system. These findings ii support the recommendations to centralise urgent and EMS in England. However, a cost benefit analysis that incorporated the results of the DCE into the economic evaluation suggested that centralised EMS could have negative societal value when compared with services provided in local hospitals. The implications of these findings, potential limitations of the methods used in this thesis and recommendations for future research are discussed.Health Foundation Londo

Environmental Policy Tools and Firm-Level Management Practices : Empirical Evidence for Germany.

On the basis of abundant facility and firm-level data for German manufacturing, originating from a recent OECD-survey, this paper empirically investigates the relevance of a variety of incentives for environmentally innovative behavior of facilities, the respective influence of pressure groups, and the impact of both regulatory and market-based policy instruments, such as eco-taxes. Since the early 1990s, Environmental Management Systems (EMS), specifically, have become a vital voluntary complement to mandatory environmental policies based on regulation and legislation. EMS may be perceived as an organizational environmental innovation that may lead to improved environmental performance. While the paper provides a descriptive analysis of the determinants for EMS-adoption and incentives that may trigger environmental innovation activities within German facilities, the major questions that will be addressed in this paper are: (1) How can public authorities support the introduction of management practices that may lead to improved environmental performance? (2) What are the main determinants of environmentally innovative behavior of firms? Specifically, we are interested in the role that market forces and regulation play in the process of complex firm decisions on innovation and environmental performance. While the relevant literature on these issues is dominated by case studies, our large-scale survey indicates that the most important reasons why firms contemplate introducing EMS are to improve the efforts to achieve regulatory compliance, to improve the corporate image, and to create cost savings with respect to both waste management and resource input. Among pressure groups, internal stakeholders - management employees and corporate headquarters - appear to be more influential with respect to EMS-adoption and environmental innovation than external forces, such as public authorities. --Environmental Management Systems,EMAS,Environmental Policy Instruments

Environmental management systems (EMS)

The chapter aimed to review the environmental management system (EMS) on the company’s workplace. The implementation of EMS ISO 14001 was reviewed at two companies; Fujitsu Component Sdn. Bhd. and Evergreen Fibreboard Bhd. The company with EMS ISO 14001 policy has effects to implement proper waste management system. More cooperation and knowledge implementation required in maintain ongoing environmental payback, cost savings and contribute to building attractive work place traditions

Standardized environmental management systems as an internal management tool

In a principal-agent model we analyze the firm’s decision to adopt an informal or a standardized Environmental Management System (EMS). Our results are consistent with empirical evidence in several respects. A standardized EMS increases the internal control at the cost of introducing some degree of rigidity that entails an endogenous setup cost. Standardized systems are more prone to be adopted by big and well established firms and under tougher environmental policies. Firms with standardized EMS tend to devote more effort to abatement although this effort results in lower pollution only if public incentives are strong enough, suggesting a complementarity relationship between standardized EMS and public policies. Emission charges have both a marginal effect on abatement and a qualitative effect on the adoption decision that may induce a conflict between private and public interests. As a result of the combination of these two effects it can be optimal for the government to distort the tax in a specific way in order to push the firm to choose the socially optimal EMS. The introduction of standardized systems can result in win-win situations where firms, society and the environment get better off

Optimal Energy Management of a Grid-Tied Solar PV-Battery Microgrid: A Reinforcement Learning Approach

In the near future, microgrids will become more prevalent as they play a critical role in integrating distributed renewable energy resources into the main grid. Nevertheless, renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind energy can be extremely volatile as they are weather dependent. These resources coupled with demand can lead to random variations on both the generation and load sides, thus complicating optimal energy management. In this article, a reinforcement learning approach has been proposed to deal with this non-stationary scenario, in which the energy management system (EMS) is modelled as a Markov decision process (MDP). A novel modification of the control problem has been presented that improves the use of energy stored in the battery such that the dynamic demand is not subjected to future high grid tariffs. A comprehensive reward function has also been developed which decreases infeasible action explorations thus improving the performance of the data-driven technique. A Q-learning algorithm is then proposed to minimize the operational cost of the microgrid under unknown future information. To assess the performance of the proposed EMS, a comparison study between a trading EMS model and a non-trading case is performed using a typical commercial load curve and PV profile over a 24-h horizon. Numerical simulation results indicate that the agent learns to select an optimized energy schedule that minimizes energy cost (cost of power purchased from the utility and battery wear cost) in all the studied cases. However, comparing the non-trading EMS to the trading EMS model operational costs, the latter one was found to decrease costs by 4.033% in summer season and 2.199% in winter season