Strategic marketing of water services in developing countries

The recent (2000) global water supply and sanitation assessment by the World Health Organisation found that over one billion people do not have access to improved water supply. The finding points to the challenges faced by municipal engineers and other professionals responsible for the provision of water services in developing countries. Population growth and the increasing poverty, particularly in the urban areas, compound the challenge. A key objective for water utilities is to provide services to the growing population, including the poor, in a financially sustainable manner. Strategic marketing offers an innovative method of meeting this objective. Research aimed at adapting and developing a marketing approach for use in the water sector was carried out in a number of developing countries between 1999 and 2001, with detailed field research in Kenya, Uganda and India. This paper discusses strategic marketing of urban water services and provides a methodology that water utilities could use to structure their service delivery options to customers while meeting their financial objectives. The paper outlines how utilities could structure service delivery with appropriate pricing and serve more excluded customers (including the poor) at affordable cost and achieve financial sustainability. The paper concludes that strategic marketing of water services has potential to improve services to existing and excluded (potential) customers while improving the utility's revenue base

Energy Constrained Generation Dispatch Based on Price Forecasts Including Expected Values and Risk

A number of price forecasting methods are used to forecast wholesale (spot) electricity prices. The forecasts are evaluated for both accuracy and variation in accuracy (risk). These forecasts are used to balance revenue against forecasting error risk in dispatching constrained generation. The best dispatch method found was based on the half-hours with the maximum demand

Coping with the Senior Thesis Seminar: Some Thoughts for Both Students and Professors

Based on our experiences as professor and student. respectively, in. the undergraduate Senior Thesis Seminar, we offer our thoughts on the fundamental issues facing participants in this class. We speak to students about selecting a topic, choosing a supervisor, working with classmates, delivering the oral presentation, and coping with difficulties. We advise on professors helping students select a topic, monitoring student progress, adjusting to different types of students, approaching the oral presentations, interacting with faculty in the presence of students, and injecting themselves into student work. Consideration of these ideas-presented as a series of lessons--should promote more effective learning experiences in this course

Evaluation of support vector machine based forecasting tool in electricity price forecasting for Australian national electricity market participants

In this paper we present an analysis of the results of a study into wholesale (spot) electricity price forecasting utilising Neural Networks (NNs) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). Frequent regulatory changes in electricity markets and the quickly evolving market participant pricing (bidding) strategies cause efficient retraining to be crucial in maintaining the accuracy of electricity price forecasting models. The efficiency of NN and SVM retraining for price forecasting was evaluated using Australian National Electricity Market (NEM), New South Wales regional data over the period from September 1998 to December 1998. The analysis of the results showed that SVMs with one unique solution, produce more consistent forecasting accuracies and so require less time to optimally train than NNs which can result in a solution at any of a large number of local minima. The SVM and NN forecasting accuracies were found to be very similar

Evaluation Of Support Vector Machine Based Forecasting Tool In Electricity Price Forecasting For Australian National Electricity Market Participants

In this paper, we present an analysis of the results of a study into wholesale (spot) electricity price forecasting utilising Neural Networks (NNs) and Support Vector Machines (SVM). Frequent regulatory changes in electricity markets and the quickly evolving market participant pricing (bidding) strategies cause efficient retraining to be crucial in maintaining the accuracy of electricity price forecasting models. The efficiency of NN and SVM retraining for price forecasting was evaluated using Australian National Electricity Market (NEM), New South Wales regional data over the period from September 1998 to December 1998. The analysis of the results showed that SVMs with one unique solution, produce more consistent forecasting accuracies and so require less time to optimally train than NNs, which can result in a solution at any of a large number of local minima. The SVM and NN forecasting accuracies were found to be very similar

Support Vector Machine Based Electricity Price Forecasting For Electricity Markets utilising Projected Assessment of System Adequacy Data

In this paper we present an analysis of the results of a study into wholesale (spot) electricity price forecasting with Support Vector Machines (SVM) utilising past price and demand data and Projected Assessment of System Adequacy (PASA) data. The forecasting accuracy was evaluated using Australian National Electricity Market (NEM), New South Wales regional data over the year 2002. The inclusion of PASA data shows little improvement in forecasting accuracy

Effects of External Physical Assistive Devices on Gait.

Assistive devices (ADs) are often used by rehabilitation professionals to help individuals walk independently. When using ADs, individuals show observable changes in their walking pattern. However, little research exists objectively documenting the acute, real-time changes in gait that occur despite the significant influence these devices exert on an individual’s movement. Understanding the acute changes in movement that occur with use of an AD is a very important component in the decision-making process for rehabilitation professionals who recommend and, often, provide ADs to patients in the hospital or clinic to foster patient compliance and thus, safety. This series of research studies examining external AD use are the first to quantitatively and qualitatively report both overt and underlying acute changes in gait for two unique populations: children with myelomeningocele (MMC) and typically developing (TD) infants learning to cruise. Overall, our results showed that use of ADs caused changes in gait patterns of children with MMC and TD infants. For children with MMC walking with rigid ADs compared to independently, changes were found in not only basic gait characteristics, but muscle activation patterns, and energy consumption. However, for TD infants wearing a flexible AD around the hips and pelvis while cruising, gait adaptations were more subtle as evidenced by minimal to no changes in segmental angle trajectories and classic gait parameters. Despite the lack of change in overt gait parameters for infants while cruising in the flexible AD, more apparent adaptations were shown in dynamic representations of cruising behavior (e.g., shifts in state space location for phase plane portrait plots). The studies presented show that these two unique populations, children with MMC and TD infants, have the capacity and flexibility to acutely adapt their motor control strategies, segment coordination, and movement patterns to application of external manipulations. What we don’t know is if, over the long-term, these adaptations will result in decreased or increased dependency on ADs. Therefore, further research is warranted to investigate impact of these devices on both overt movement behaviors and underlying control mechanisms before we can determine if use of ADs help or hinder functional mobility.PHDKinesiologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/97918/1/jksansom_1.pd

Diversity of new Martian crater clusters informs meteoroid atmospheric interactions

We investigated 634 crater clusters on Mars detected between 2007 and 2021, which represent more than half of all impacts discovered in this period. Crater clusters form when meteoroids in the 10 kg to 10 ton mass range break-up in Mars' atmosphere to produce a few to a few hundred fragments that hit the ground. The properties of the clusters can inform our understanding of meteoroid properties and the processes that govern their fragmentation. We mapped individual craters $>$1 m within each cluster and defined a range of cluster properties based on the spatial and size distributions of the craters. The large data set, with over eight times more cluster observations than previous work, provides a more robust statistical investigation of crater cluster parameters and their correlations. Trends in size, dispersion and large crater fraction with elevation support weak atmospheric filtering of material. The diversity in the number of individual craters within a cluster, and their size-frequency distributions, may reflect either a diversity in fragmentation style, fragility or internal particle sizes.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures at the en

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) : The mechanisms for quiescent galaxy formation at z<1

© 2016 The Authors. One key problem in astrophysics is understanding how and why galaxies switch off their star formation, building the quiescent population that we observe in the local Universe. From the Galaxy And Mass Assembly and VIsible MultiObject Spectrograph Public Extragalactic Redshift surveys, we use spectroscopic indices to select quiescent and candidate transition galaxies.We identify potentially rapidly transitioning post-starburst (PSB) galaxies and slower transitioning green-valley galaxies. Over the last 8Gyr, the quiescent population has grown more slowly in number density at high masses (M * > 10 11 M ⊙ ) than at intermediate masses (M * > 10 10.6 M ⊙ ). There is evolution in both the PSB and green-valley stellar mass functions, consistent with higher mass galaxies quenching at earlier cosmic times.At intermediatemasses (M * > 10 10.6 M ⊙ ), we find a green-valley transition time-scale of 2.6 Gyr. Alternatively, at z ~ 0.7, the entire growth rate could be explained by fast-quenching PSB galaxies, with a visibility time-scale of 0.5 Gyr. At lower redshift, the number density of PSBs is so low that an unphysically short visibility window would be required for them to contribute significantly to the quiescent population growth. The importance of the fast-quenching route may rapidly diminish at z 10 11 M ⊙ ), there is tension between the large number of candidate transition galaxies compared to the slow growth of the quiescent population. This could be resolved if not all high-mass PSB and green-valley galaxies are transitioning from star forming to quiescent, for example if they rejuvenate out of the quiescent population following the accretion of gas and triggering of star formation, or if they fail to completely quench their star formation