Business Value of IT in Commercial Banks

Many banks have deployed information technology (IT) to serve customers more efficiency in diverse ways. In a competitive business environment, bank managers must simultaneously use multiple service channels to win customers and increase profit. Most prior research on IT investment in the banking industry has focused on the adoption of innovative IT-based service channels such as Internet banking, from customers’ perspective. In this research, we adopt the banks’ perspective to analyze the impact of IT on performance by simultaneously considering the traditional physical channel and alternative IT-based service channels. Our initial findings reveal contrasting strategic rationale supporting the use of ATM-based channel versus more recent Internet-based banking

COMPLEMENTARITY OF THE IMPACT OF ALTERNATIVE SERVICE CHANNELS ON BANK PERFORMANCE

Faced with intense competition, banks have deployed information technology (IT) to serve customers more efficiently and effectively in diverse ways. The challenge bank managers face is in utilizing alternative service channels to win customers and retain competitive advantages. This study investigates the impact of banks’ use of channel mix strategy. We show strong complementarities between traditional branch channel and IT-based self-service channels on performance. The value provided by a channel depends both on its own level of investment and investments in other channels. It can be misleading to examine channels independently or simply view each channel as a substitute for other channels. Even though different channels do substitute each other to some extent, migration of transactions from traditional channels to the IT-based channels may change customers’ overall demand such that it increases demand for all channels by transforming traditional channels to perform more value-added services or serve more profitable customers

Reaction Intensity Partitioning: A New Perspective of the National Fire Danger Rating System Energy Release Component

The Rothermel fire spread model provides the scientific basis for the US National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) and several other important fire management applications. This study proposes a new perspective of the model that partitions the reaction intensity function and Energy Release Component (ERC) equations as an alternative that simplifies calculations while providing more insight into the temporal variability of the energy release component of fire danger. We compare the theoretical maximum reaction intensities and corresponding ERCs across 1978, 1988 and 2016 NFDRS fuel models as they are currently computed and as they would be computed under the proposed scheme. The advantages and disadvantages of the new approach are discussed. More study is required to determine its operational implications

A preliminary description of climatology in the western United States

We describe the climatology of the western United States as seen from two 1-month perspectives, January and July 1988, of the National Meteorological Center large-scale global analysis, the Colorado State University Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS), and various station observation sets. An advantage of the NMC analysis and the RAMS is that they provide a continuous field interpolation of the meteorological variables. It is more difficult to describe spatial meteorological fields from the available sparse station networks. We assess accuracy of the NMC analysis and RAMS by finding differences between the analysis, the model, and station values at the stations. From these comparisons, we find that RAMS has much more well-developed mesoscale circulation, especially in the surface wind field. However, RAMS climatological and transient fields do not appear to be substantially closer than the larger-scale analysis to the station observations. The RAMS model does provide other meteorological variables, such as precipitation, which are not readily available from the archives of the global analysis. Thus, RAMS could, at the least, be a tool to augment the NMC large-scale analyses

The Los Alamos General Circulation Model hydrologic cycle

As the global population has increased, so have human influences on the global environment. ... How can we better understand and predict these natural and potential anthropogenic variations? One way is to develop a model that can accurately describe all the components of the hydrologic cycle, rather than just the end result variables such as precipitation and soil moisture. If we can predict and simulate variations in evaporation and moisture convergence, as well as precipitation, then we will have greater confidence in our ability to at least model precipitation variations. Therefore, we describe here just how well we can model relevant aspects of the global hydrologic cycle. In particular, we determine how well we can model the annual and seasonal mean global precipitation, evaporation, and atmospheric water vapor transport

The Steady-State Planetary Wave Response to Wave-Coupled Orographic Lower Boundary Forcing and Diabatic Heating in The Northern Hemisphere

173 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987.A planetary wave model which is symmetric about the equator has been developed using the linear balance set of equations. The model is formulated on a sphere and spectrally truncated to 4 zonal and 7 meridional modes. There are 11 levels in the vertical with the highest computational level at 5 mb. The model is linearized about an observed January zonal mean basic state and forced by the Northern Hemisphere orography and a wintertime calculated diabatic heating.A wave-coupled LBC (lower boundary condition) is employed and contrasted to the wave-decoupled LBC which has been used in many other forced wave models. Thus the eddies at the lower boundary also flow over the mountains and produce vertical motion. In this way, although the model remains linear, zonal waves are coupled through the LBC and the model equations have to be solved for simultaneously. The wave-coupled LBC has significant impact on the forced planetary waves.In the vicinity of the Himalayas when the wave-coupled LBC is used, the boundary eddies setup perturbation easterlies that locally offset the imposed zonal mean westerlies. Thus the wave-coupled LBC adjusts the lower boundary wave structure so that the total flow tends to circumvent the Himalayas rather than to flow over. When the diabatic heating field is included, the resulting simulation successfully reproduces most of the tropospheric time mean flow characteristics. The model generates zonal mean eddy heat and momentum fluxes that are in good agreement with those observed throughout the troposphere. However, in contrast, the model with wave-decoupled LBC poorly simulates the Siberian High, Aleutian Low and East-Asian Trough. Consequently it produces the lower tropospheric eddy heat flux maxima located 15 degrees of latitude too far south compared with observations and the magnitude of the eddy statistics is overestimated throughout the troposphere.It is found that both orographic and thermal forcings strongly interact with each other through the wave-coupled LBC. The results indicates that both forcings are important in the troposphere, while the thermal waves are dominant in the stratosphere.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Positive feedbacks between the Antarctic Circumpolar Wave and the global El Nino-Southern Oscillation

Atmospheric and oceanic teleconnections link the Antarctic Circumpolar Wave (ACW) in the Southern Ocean [ White and Peterson, 1996 ] and the global El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) wave (GEW) in the tropical Indo-Pacific Ocean [ White and Cayan, 2000 ], both signals characterized by eastward phase propagation and 3- to 5-year- period variability. We extend the tropical standing mode of ENSO into the extratropics by regressing the Niño-3 sea surface temperature (SST) index against sea level pressure (SLP) anomalies over the globe, finding the Pacific-South America (PSA) pattern in SLP anomaly [ Cai and Baines, 2001 ] straddling Drake Passage in the Southern Ocean. The amplitude of this PSA pattern is ∼1/3 that of the ACW in this domain and thus cannot be considered its principal driver. On the other hand, suppressing the tropical standing mode of ENSO in interannual ST (surface temperature) and SLP anomalies over the globe allows the GEW to be observed much more readily, whereupon its eastward phase propagation across the Warm Pool is found to remotely force the ACW in the eastern Pacific and western Atlantic sectors of the Southern Ocean through atmospheric teleconnections [ Sardeshmukh and Hoskins, 1988 ] which propagate along with it. Subsequently, the ACW propagates this imposed GEW signal throughout the remainder of the Southern Ocean as a coupled wave in covarying ST and SLP anomalies, whereupon entering the Indian sector 1.5 to 2.5 years later it spawns a northern branch which takes another 1.5 to 2.5 years to propagate the ACW signal equatorward into the Warm Pool south of Indonesia. There it interferes constructively with the GEW. Thus the two forms of teleconnection, one fast and directed from the tropics to the high southern latitudes via the atmosphere and the other slow and directed from the high southern latitudes to the tropics via the ocean, complete a global circuit of 3- to 5-year duration that reinforces both the ACW and GEW and influences the tropical standing mode of ENSO