Policy design and infrastructure planning:finding tools to promote land use transport integration

Governments have widely adopted policy goals that span the domains of land use and transport, such as promoting accessibility and reducing the environmental impact of transport. Despite these crosscutting ambitions, government action often remains fragmented as it has persistently proven to be a struggle to overcome the segmented organization of land use and transport planning. Responding to a growing need for an effective approach to land use and transport integration (LUTI), this research adopts a policy design perspective that revolves around the conscious effort of matching policy instruments to policy goals in order to attain desired outcomes. Using four interrelated in-depth cases studies, this study combines an institutional analysis, a longitudinal analysis, a comparative case study and a qualitative comparative analysis of Dutch national and regional transport planning with the aim of determining how policy design thinking can help to bring together the planning of land use and transport infrastructure. Overall, the study finds that a policy design approach to LUTI is more than simply matching goals and instruments. Instead, it involves tailoring a mix of mutually supportive procedural and substantive instruments to fit specific integrated land use and transport goals, while at the same time preventing policy designs to develop into sub-optimal configurations by managing ongoing design dynamics, and making policy instruments responsive to the contextual setting in which they are employed. The four case studies presented in this thesis provide insight into why LUTI remains a struggle and how policy design can be applied to promote such integration

Feasibility Study of Economics and Performance of Solar Photovoltaics at the Stringfellow Superfund Site in Riverside, California

This report presents the results of an assessment of the technical and economic feasibility of deploying a photovoltaics (PV) system on the Stringfellow Superfund Site in Riverside, California. The site was assessed for possible PV installations. The cost, performance, and site impacts of different PV options were estimated. The economics of the potential systems were analyzed using an electric rate of $0.13/kWh and incentives offered by Southern California Edison under the California Solar Initiative. According to the assessment, a government-owned, ground-mounted PV system represents a technically and economically feasible option. The report recommends financing options that could assist in the implementation of such a system

Lightweight Visualisations of COBOL Code for Supporting Migration to SOA

In this age of complex business landscapes, many enterprises turn to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for aligning their IT portfolio with their business. Because of the enormous business risk involved with replacing an enterpriseâs IT landscape, a stepwise migration to SOA is required. As a first step, they need to understand and assess the current structure of their legacy systems. Based on existing reverse engineering techniques, we provide visualisations to support this process for COBOL systems and present preliminary results of an ongoing industrial case study

What’s new in using platelet research? To unravel thrombopathies and other human disorders

This review on platelet research focuses on defects of adhesion, cytoskeletal organisation, signal transduction and secretion. Platelet defects can be studied by different laboratory platelet functional assays and morphological studies. Easy bruising or a suspected platelet-based bleeding disorder is of course the most obvious reason to test the platelet function in a patient. However, nowadays platelet research also contributes to our understanding of human pathology in other disciplines such as neurology, nephrology, endocrinology and metabolic diseases. Apart from a discussion on classical thrombopathies, this review will also deal with the less commonly known relation between platelet research and disorders with a broader clinical phenotype. Classical thrombopathies involve disorders of platelet adhesion such as Glanzmann thrombastenia and Bernard-Soulier syndrome, defective G protein signalling diseases with impaired phospholipase C activation, and abnormal platelet granule secretion disorders such as gray platelet disorder and delta-storage pool disease. Other clinical symptoms besides a bleeding tendency have been described in MYH9-related disorders and Duchenne muscular dystrophy due to adhesion defects, and also in disorders of impaired Gs signalling, in Hermansky Pudlack disease and Chediak Higashi disease with abnormal secretion. Finally, platelet research can also be used to unravel novel mechanisms involved in many neurological disorders such as depression and autism with only a subclinical platelet defect

Design and Evaluation of a Net Zero Energy Low-Income Residential Housing Development in Lafayette, Colorado

This abbreviated report outlines the lessons learned and sub-metered energy performance of an ultra low energy single family ranch home and duplex unit, called the Paradigm Pilot Project and presents the final design recommendations for a 153-unit net zero energy residential development called the Josephine Commons Project

Understanding the ongoing struggle for land use and transport integration:Institutional incongruence in the Dutch national planning process

Formal and informal institutions help shape processes of planning, as 'rules of the game'. However, institutions do not always align. As a result of changes in strategy and operation, institutional incongruence can emerge as old and new institutions conflict or as actors perceive and apply institutions in a different manner. In this article, we aim to gain insight in the concept of institutional incongruence and the way it shapes transport planning policy and implementation. To this end, we analyse the role of institutional congruence in the case of land use transport integration (LUTI) in the Netherlands. Although LUTI creates opportunities for beneficial synergies and helps avoid unwanted consequences, such as project time and project cost overruns, examples of successful deployment remain scarce. Through an institutional analysis of the Dutch national Planning, Programming and Budgeting (PPB) System for road infrastructure, we assess the ways in which LUTI is enabled or obstructed by formal and informal institutions. The one-year research project involves a triangulation of literature research, policy analysis, 22 expert interviews, focus groups and workshops. The findings illustrate that strategy and operation each present distinct formal and informal institutional incongruence that negatively influence land-use transport integration. We conclude that institutional incongruence is several instances of institutional incongruence can be found throughout the Dutch national planning process. These are partly inevitable because institutional change occurs gradually to reflect developments in society and manifests itself in both formal and informal rules. Therefore we recommend that, in order to achieve LUTI, the full institutional configuration of formal and informal rules, at strategic and operational level should be analysed, redesigned and aligned

Finding the right tools for the job:Instrument mixes for land use and transport integration in the Netherlands

Governments have widely established policy goals, which span the domains of land use and transport. Despite these integrated ambitions, government action often remains fragmented. This study adopts an instrumental perspective to encourage land-use and transport integration (LUTI). So far, the existing literature on this subject has adopted a single-instrument perspective and has been primarily focused on technical, rather than governance-oriented, instruments. Using a comprehensive analytical framework derived from combining policy integration and policy instrument theory, this in-depth multiple case study of the Dutch provinces of Friesland, Overijssel and North Brabant investigates how governments use a mix of policy instruments throughout the policy process to achieve LUTI in collaboration with municipalities. These instruments are compared based on how they structure interaction — i.e., the transfer of resources — across horizontal and vertical boundaries. The study finds that there is not one right tool to achieve LUTI. Instead, it is about finding the right mix of instruments, which, in line with LUTI goals, helps overcome government fragmentation by structuring interaction patterns across horizontal and vertical boundaries. Interestingly, each province adopts a unique mix of instruments that reflects a specific approach, typical to the case.</p

The importance of policy design fit for effectiveness: a qualitative comparative analysis of policy integration in regional transport planning

Policy design has returned as a central topic in public policy research. An important area of policy design study deals with effectively attaining desired policy outcomes by align- ing goals and means to achieve policy design fit. So far, only a few empirical studies have explored the relationship between policy design fit and effectiveness. In this paper, we adopt the multilevel framework for policy design to determine which conditions of policy design fit—i.e., goal coherence, means consistency, and congruence of goals and means across policy levels—are necessary and/or sufficient for policy design effectiveness in the context of policy integration. To this end, we performed a qualitative comparative analysis of Dutch regional transport planning including all twelve provinces. Outcomes show no condition is necessary and two combinations of conditions are sufficient for effectiveness. The first sufficient combination confirms what the literature suggests, namely that policy design fit results in policy design effectiveness. The second indicates that the combination goal incoherence and incongruence of goals and means is sufficient for policy design effec- tiveness. An in-depth interpretation of this counterintuitive result leads to the conclusion that for achieving policy integration the supportive relationship between policy design fit and policy design effectiveness is less straightforward as theory suggests. Instead, results indicate there are varying degrees of coherence, consistency, and congruence that affect effectiveness in different ways. Furthermore, outcomes reveal that under specific circum- stances a policy design may be effective in promoting desired policy integration even if it is incoherent, inconsistent, and/or incongruent

Feasibility Study of Economics and Performance of Solar Photovoltaics at the Tower Road Site in Aurora, Colorado. A Study Prepared in Partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency for the RE-Powering America's Land Initiative: Siting Renewable Energy on Potentially Contaminated Land and Mine Sites

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in accordance with the RE-Powering America's Land initiative, selected the Tower Road site in Aurora, Colorado, for a feasibility study of renewable energy production. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) provided technical assistance for this project. The purpose of this report is to assess the site for a possible photovoltaic (PV) system installation and estimate the cost, performance, and site impacts of different PV options. In addition, the report recommends financing options that could assist in the implementation of a PV system at the site. This study did not assess environmental conditions at the site