Collaboration opportunities in advanced housing renovation

AbstractIn theory, there is huge potential for reducing the energy consumed by existing single-family houses by thoroughly renovating them. For the successful market development of highly energy-efficient integrated renovations, supply chain collaboration is very important, while at the same time customer demand for integrated renovations has to be stimulated. A research and networking methodology was developed within the framework of the One Stop Shop project to identify and develop collaboration opportunities for advanced housing renovation in Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Norway. The research identified key supply-side needs through interviews and questionnaires, and analysed important elements for the development of a web-based portal that can connect supply and demand. The project further developed ideas and methods for collaboration and business model generation between different players on the renovation market. These different research results contributed to defining new business opportunities related to process innovation to unburden the homeowner and to achieve less fragmented renovation processes

An Artificial Bee Colony optimization-based approach for sizing and composition of Arctic offshore drilling support fleets considering cost-efficiency

This article presents an optimization-based approach for sizing and composition of an Arctic offshore drilling support fleet considering cost-efficiency. The approach studies the main types of duties related to Arctic offshore drillings: supply, towing, anchor handling, standby, oil spill response, firefighting, and ice management. The approach considers the combined effect of the expected costs of accidental events, the versatility of individual support vessels, and ice management. The approach applies an Artificial Bee Colony algorithm-based optimization procedure. As demonstrated through case studies, the approach may help to find a range of cost-efficient fleet compositions. Some of the obtained solutions are similar to corresponding real-life fleets, indicating that the approach works in principle. Sensitivity analyses indicate that the consideration of the expected costs from accidental events significantly impacts the obtained solution, and that investments to reduce these costs may improve the overall cost-efficiency of an Arctic offshore drilling support fleet.Comment: 25 page