Scale of Collieries and their Top-Level Management Capability in the Polish Coal Mining Industry: Recent Results

In this paper the following topics are considered: retrospective research into the effect of coal mine scale on its effectiveness; research results on the effect of the "system size" (coal mine) on the top-level management capability; and problem specifications for further research work in this area. The research results presented in this paper are part of the work accomplished within the IIASA project called "Coal -- Issues for the Eighties". Among others, elements of the IIASA concept "S-IOT" have been used

The Shinkansen Program: Transportation, Railway, Environmental, Regional, and National Issues

This report analyzes the construction of the nationwide high-speed (210 km/h) railway system in Japan - the Shinkansen Program. The Program was begun in 1969/70. Recently the Japanese government decided to speed up the Shinkansen Program and the first stage could possibly be completed during the next two to three years. The systems analysis framework developed at IIASA has been applied for the evaluation of the Shinkansen Program. It includes transportation, railway, environmental, regional and national development subsystem analyses as well as an analysis of the main features of this program. Lessons from the Shinkansen Program Case Study are presented

The Kinki Integrated Regional Development Program

This book, which is divided into 7 sections, covers not only the contributions made at a Workshop held in 1978 but also the results of additional work done at IIASA, in Japan, and elsewhere. The first section reviews the Kinki IRDP problematique: the region's situation and relations to other regions, its administrative division, its economic and demographic structure, its main congestions and other problems. This is followed by a section presenting some findings of IIASA's study of the Kinki region. Some general aspects of regional planning and programming are discussed in the third section which concludes with the presentation of the framework developed for organizing regional programs and evaluating policy formulation. The fourth part deals with models for integrated regional development programs. It summarizes the experiences of IBM Japan in developing and using computer systems for regional planning, presents a method for recognizing basic regional issues and their structure, and describes a model for ultra-long-term integrated development in the Kinki region. The fifth part is devoted to models for particular problem areas, and the sixth section presents methods for solving regional problems: multi-objective mathematical programming applied to social planning, the nested Lagrangian multiplier method applied to environmental system planning, and an approach toward group decision. The seventh section sets forth some concluding remarks

Regional Agricultural Policy Design on the Basis of a Detailed Linear Economic and Agrotechnical Model

The use of a large-scale LP agricultural model for supporting the policy design process is presented. The model determines the agricultural crop and livestock specialization in a detailed, disaggregated form, i.e. distributed over subregions, properties, sail qualities, technologies, etc. and basic financial and material flaws, all in given natural conditions, e.g. sail qualities, and available resources, e.g. manpower, machinery, capital, etc. The policy is meant in terms of imposed price structure and resource distribution. The use of information obtainable from both primal and dual solution is shown. The results of implementation for a region in Poland are presented

The Shinkansen High-Speed Rail Network of Japan; Proceedings of an IIASA Conference, June 27-30, 1977

The Shinkansen is the peak of railway technology. It travels the 550 km between Tokyo and Osaka 275 times every day at a speed of 210 km/hr. Such a revolution in transportation technology requires very special organization and is bound to have unexpected socioeconomic effects. The Shinkansen has had a large effect on migration patterns in Japan because it has drastically reduced the time it takes to travel from city to city. It has also affected the lives of people who may never use it. Stores in small communities can now offer produce that was too hard for them to obtain before the Shinkansen was built. But travel at high speed creates a great deal of noise, and special care must be taken to keep the tracks clear; at 210 km/hr, a train needs 3 km to stop in an emergency. The IIASA study of the Shinkansen began with this conference. Officials from the Japanese National Railways were invited to describe the development of the Shinkansen, scientists who had studied its effects presented their findings, and members of the IIASA research team outlined the approach that they would use in their study of the Shinkansen. Their papers are collected in this book. After an introductory section describing the history and outlining the plans for the Shinkansen, Sections 2 and 3 deal with the socioeconomic and environmental effects. Section 4 describes the influence the Shinkansen has had on national development. The last two sections deal with the organization of the Shinkansen itself. Section 5 describes the planning and administration of the Shinkansen by the Japanese National Railways, and Section 6 covers the physical requirements of high-speed train operation: the maintenance network and maintenance schedule, vehicle design, accident prevention, the seat reservation system, and other aspects of running a high-speed railroad from day to day

The Bratsk-Ilimsk Territorial Production Complex: A Field Study Report

The Management and Technology Area of IIASA has carried out case studies of large-scale development programs since 1975. The purpose of these studies is to examine successful programs of regional development from an international perspective, with a multidisciplinary team of scientists skilled in the use of systems analysis. The study of the Bratsk-Ilimsk Territorial Production Complex (BITPC) represents an interim effort in our research activities. The first study was of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States; forthcoming is the study of the Shinkansen development program in Japan. The present Report covers six major aspects of the BITPC program: goals, variants, and strategies; planning and organization; model calculations and computer applications; integration of environmental factors; energy supply systems; and water resources. It is hoped that the experience of the Soviet scientists and practitioners and the observations and suggestions of the study team will provide the IIASA National Member Organizations with insights into problem solving in the management, planning, and organization of large-scale development programs. The study was accomplished with the support and assistance of the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology, and the Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences

Ecological Sustainability of Regional Development

In June 1987, an important international Workshop was held in Vilnius. Lithuanian SSR on the topic, "Ecological Sustainability of Regional Development". The number of participants was 65, coming from nine countries. Many of the papers dealt with ecological-economic assessment methods used in East European countries for regional development planning. Some of the ideas were quite new to environmental planners from Western Europe, and are of great interest to them. This is one kind of service that IIASA provides very well -- bringing people together and bridging language barriers in the East-West context. IIASA is pleased to be associated with the 1987 Workshop and with these Proceedings

Forest Decline and Reproduction: Regional and Global Consequences (Proceedings of a Workshop in Krakow, Poland, 23-27 March 1987)

Within the framework of the Dendrochronology, Biosphere and Acid Rain activities of IIASA's Environment Program, a Workshop "Forest Decline and Reproduction: Regional and Global Consequences" was held in Krakow, Poland from 23rd to 27th March, 1987. The Workshop was organized by IIASA in cooperation with the International Union of Forestry Research Organizations (IUFRO) and the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The objectives of the Workshop were to seek a consensus about the status and knowledge of forest decline, especially in Europe, to identify the choices that international organizations, the forestry community, governments and industry must face, and to discuss ways to avoid further forest decline and facilitate the sustainability of the forest sector. A special field study trip was arranged to the Niepolomice Forest where special attention was given to the bio-indications of industrial damage and the disturbances of the main forest functions were discussed. The Workshop was attended by some 90 senior scientists and agency representatives from East and West Europe, North America, Scandinavia and Japan. Great interest was shown by the ECE/FAO Team of Experts on Forest Decline whose representatives attended as observers. The Team of Experts held a special Committee Meeting in connection with the results achieved. In addition to presentations of some 60 papers on forest decline, the Workshop organizers and a number of key speakers prepared a set of resolutions that were adopted by the Workshop participants. Briefly, the resolutions call for reductions of air pollutant emissions, improved monitoring of the extent and growth rate of forest decline, more research in specific areas, and increased international cooperation

Management of Technological Innovations toward Systems-Integrated Organized Technology

This paper, which was presented at the Third International Conference on Management of Research, Development and Education at the Technical University of Wroclaw in September 1978 extends the discussion of the Systems-Integrated Organized Technology (S-IOT) approach, first enunciated by G.M. Dobrov in a paper to the Academy of Management Annual Meeting at Orlando in 1977

A General Regional Agricultural Model (GRAM) Applied to a Region in Poland

The General Regional Agricultural Model (GRAM) described in this report is the product of a case study of regional development in the Upper Notec region of Poland carried out collaboratively by IIASA and the Systems Research Institute in Warsaw, Poland. The purpose of this work was twofold: to assist Polish authorities in planning the development of agriculture in the region, and to create a universal methodology in the form of a model applicable to similar problems and settings in other countries. Thus, the methodological characteristics presented in this report are based on testing and implementing the model in the concrete situation of the Upper Notec region of Poland. GRAM was developed using the so-called "bottom-up" approach, which consists of orienting the model toward technological interdependencies at the level of the agricultural areas in the region, and including a set of variables and parameters that enable this "bottom" model to be linked with those for other aspects of the regional economy. The model deals with the following elements: a set of crops, a number of rotation groups; types of agricultural animals, types of livestock products, and feed components in forage; three types of market and three types of land ownership; different crop growing and livestock breeding technologies; and different soil qualities and types of fertilizers according to the contents of the elements. The model incorporates space and can give solutions for a number of regions. Technically GRAM is a large linear programming model with static relations. The purpose of the model is to derive a detailed specification for a production structure combined with a direct utilization of its products that is optimal for a predefined objective. The model can also be used to indicate essential bottlenecks, resource distribution inconsistencies, and so on. It allows the formulations of multi-objective optimization problems to consider conflicts between different groups of producers. It is solved under constraints in labor, machinery, fertilizers and water availability at annual and two peak levels. Two types of objective functions are used: monetary (linked with cost-benefit analysis) and physical. Among specific objective for which the model has been solved there are: total net return or net production value from agricultural activities within the region; balance of regional agricultural production in monetary terms; regional agricultural production in terms of nutrition units; regional trade balances in livestock products in monetary terms and nutrition units; and export production in monetary terms. In cooperation with other elements of the regional model system, two types of information are exchanged: dual prices and volume of output