Planning Under Pressure

Planning Under Pressure

Author: John Friend

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 1136373306

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Planning under Pressure offers managers, planners, consultants and students a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the Strategic Choice Approach, which has gradually been attracting worldwide recognition as a fresh, versatile and practical approach to collaborative decision-making under uncertainty. Starting from basic principles, the book uses helpful diagrams and clear explanations to demonstrate practical ways of approaching daunting decision problems; of devising possible ways forward; and of working effectively towards agreed courses of action. Along he way, decision makers are helped to cope with diverse sources of uncertainty – technical, political, managerial – in a strategic manner. In this extended third edition, the authors have added short contributions from 21 users from seven countries. These new contributors present lessons from their varied experiences in adapting the Strategic Choice Approach to guide decision-making and learning in settings ranging from the re-routing of a controversial city carnival procession to national policy for the management of nuclear waste.


Decision Models in Engineering and Management

Decision Models in Engineering and Management

Author: Patricia Guarnieri

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-01-05

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 3319119494

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Providing a comprehensive overview of various methods and applications in decision engineering, this book presents chapters written by a range experts in the field. It presents conceptual aspects of decision support applications in various areas including finance, vendor selection, construction, process management, water management and energy, agribusiness , production scheduling and control, and waste management. In addition to this, a special focus is given to methods of multi-criteria decision analysis. Decision making in organizations is a recurrent theme and is essential for business continuity. Managers from various fields including public, private, industrial, trading or service sectors are required to make decisions. Consequently managers need the support of these structured methods in order to engage in effective decision making. This book provides a valuable resource for graduate students, professors and researchers of decision analysis, multi-criteria decision analysis and group decision analysis. It is also intended for production engineers, civil engineers and engineering consultants.


Urban Water Distribution Networks

Urban Water Distribution Networks

Author: Symeon Christodoulou

Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann

Published: 2017-09-07

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0128136537

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Urban Water Distribution Networks: Assessing Systems Vulnerabilities and Risks provides a methodology for a system-wide assessment of water distribution networks (WDN) based on component analysis, network topology and, most importantly, the effects of a network's past performance on its seismic and/or non-seismic reliability. Water distribution networks engineers and system designers face multiple operational issues in delivering safe and clean potable water to their customers. - Includes vulnerability assessment methods for water distribution pipes - Discusses topological aspects and their effects on network vulnerability - Explores analytical and numerical modeling methods for finding and analyzing systems vulnerabilities in water distribution networks - Features real world case studies of networks under continuous and intermittent water supply operations


Managing Urban Water Supply

Managing Urban Water Supply

Author: D.E. Agthe

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2003-11-30

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9781402017209

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We, the editors, have long believed that a strong knowledge of relatively simple economic and engineering concepts is valuable in solving water management problems. The lack of such knowledge has been apparent to us in some of the journal articles, research proposals and books we have reviewed. The articles which have been written concerning specific local water economies and management issues are scattered over a wide variety of journals, making them hard to access. Most of the extensive water resources literature is concerned with large regional water projects or with narrow technical and regional issues. This book was written to make practical economic and engineering concepts readily available to urban water supply managers, thereby filling a gap in the available literature. It is concerned with decisions made daily, monthly, or annually by managers of urban water supply systems. The book includes basic chapters presenting supply and cost concepts, calculation of demand elasticities, use of marketing concepts, public goods analysis, water markets, industrial water demand and the use of price in water conservation. The authors have included multiple examples of how these concepts can aid in managing urban water supply. The water provider is generally a governmental entity or regulated private utility. Most books on public utilities and their management emphasize gas, electricity, or telephone rather than water. Water is different because of m~or variations in quality by source and the necessity for proper disposal of waste water.


Deterioration and Optimal Rehabilitation Modelling for Urban Water Distribution Systems

Deterioration and Optimal Rehabilitation Modelling for Urban Water Distribution Systems

Author: Yi Zhou

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2018-05-03

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0429837771

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Pipe failures in water distribution systems can have a serious impact and hence it’s important to maintain the condition and integrity of the distribution system. This book presents a whole-life cost optimisation model for the rehabilitation of water distribution systems. It combines a pipe breakage number prediction model with a pipe criticality assessment model, which enables the creation of a well-constructed and more tightly constrained optimisation model. The pipe breakage number prediction model combines information on the physical characteristics of the pipes with historical information on breakage and failure rates. A weighted multiple nonlinear regression analysis is applied to describe the condition of different pipe groups. The criticality assessment model combines a pipe’s condition with its hydraulic significance through a modified TOPSIS. This model enables the optimisation to focus its efforts on those important pipes. The whole life cost optimal rehabilitation model is a multiple-objective and multiple-stage model, which provides a suite of rehabilitation decisions that minimise the whole life cost while maximising its long-term performance. The optimisation model is solved using a modified NSGA-II. The utility of the developed models is that it allows decision makers to prioritize their rehabilitation strategy in a proactive and cost-effective manner.


Routledge Handbook of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure

Routledge Handbook of Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure

Author: Paolo Gardoni

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-17

Total Pages: 1134

ISBN-13: 135139276X

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To best serve current and future generations, infrastructure needs to be resilient to the changing world while using limited resources in a sustainable manner. Research on and funding towards sustainability and resilience are growing rapidly, and significant research is being carried out at a number of institutions and centers worldwide. This handbook brings together current research on sustainable and resilient infrastructure and, in particular, stresses the fundamental nexus between sustainability and resilience. It aims to coalesce work from a large and diverse group of contributors across a wide range of disciplines including engineering, technology and informatics, urban planning, public policy, economics, and finance. Not only does it present a theoretical formulation of sustainability and resilience but it also demonstrates how these ideals can be realized in practice. This work will provide a reference text to students and scholars of a number of disciplines.


Decision Support Systems V – Big Data Analytics for Decision Making

Decision Support Systems V – Big Data Analytics for Decision Making

Author: Boris Delibašić

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-05-18

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 3319185330

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This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First International Conference on Decision Support Systems Technology, ICDSST 2015, held in Belgrade, Serbia, in May 2015. The theme of the event was “Big Data Analytics for Decision-Making” and it was organized by the EURO (Association of European Operational Research Societies) working group of Decision Support Systems (EWG-DSS). The eight papers presented in this book were selected out of 26 submissions after being carefully reviewed by at least three internationally known experts from the ICDSST 2015 Program Committee and external invited reviewers. The selected papers are representative of current and relevant research activities in the area of decision support systems, such as decision analysis for enterprise systems and non-hierarchical networks, integrated solutions for decision support and knowledge management in distributed environments, decision support system evaluations and analysis through social networks, and decision support system applications in real-world environments. The volume is completed by an additional invited paper on big data decision-making use cases.


Rainwater Tank Systems for Urban Water Supply

Rainwater Tank Systems for Urban Water Supply

Author: Ashok K. Sharma

Publisher: IWA Publishing

Published: 2015-05-15

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1780405359

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Rainwater tank systems have been widely adopted across the world to provide a safe local source of water in underdeveloped rural areas, a substitution for mains water for non potable end uses in water stressed urban areas, as well as providing flooding control in monsoonal climates such as Korea, or combined sewer systems such as Germany. The importance of these systems in cities has grown, as water managers seek to provide a range of decentralised solutions to supply constraints of current water supply systems, whilst reducing the impact of urban development on the natural environment, and increasing resilience to the impacts of climate change. Rainwater tank systems are now often implemented under integrated urban water management (IUWM) and water sensitive urban design (WSUD) philosophies, which take a holistic view of the urban water cycle. Rainwater Tank Systems for Urban Water Supply is based on a comprehensive, multi-million dollar research program that was undertaken in South East Queensland (SEQ) Australia in response to the Millennium drought when the water supply level in the regions drinking water dams dropped to 17% in July 2007 and the area came close to running out of water. In particular, the book provides insights and detailed analysis of design, modelling, implementation, operation, energy usage, economics, management, health risk, social perceptions and implications for water quality/quantity of roof water runoff. The approaches and methodologies included in Rainwater Tank Systems for Urban Water Supply inform and validate research programs, and provide insights on the expected performance and potential pitfalls of the adoption of rainwater tanks systems including: actual harvested yield and resulting mains water savings, optimal sizing for rainwater storages and roof collection systems, expected water quality and implications for managing public health risks, modelling tools available for decision support, operation and management approaches of a decentralised asset at the household scale and community acceptance. The book is suitable for use at undergraduate and post graduate levels and is of particular interest to water professionals across the globe, who are involved in the strategic water planning for a town, city or a region. It is a valuable resource for developers, civil designers, water planners, architects and plumbers seeking to implement sustainable water servicing approaches for residential, industrial and commercial developments.


Water Systems Analysis, Design, and Planning

Water Systems Analysis, Design, and Planning

Author: Mohammad Karamouz

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2021-12-29

Total Pages: 1100

ISBN-13: 1000487350

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This book presents three distinct pillars for analysis, design, and planning: urban water cycle and variability as the state of water being; landscape architecture as the medium for built-by-design; and total systems as the planning approach. The increasing demand for water and urban and industrial expansions have caused myriad environmental, social, economic, and political predicaments. More frequent and severe floods and droughts have changed the resiliency and ability of water infrastructure systems to operate and provide services to the public. These concerns and issues have also changed the way we plan and manage our water resources. Focusing on urban challenges and contexts, the book provides foundational information regarding water science and engineering while also examining topics relating to urban stormwater, water supply, and wastewater infrastructures. It also addresses critical emerging issues such as simulation and economic modeling, flood resiliency, environmental visualization, satellite data applications, and digital data model (DEM) advancements. Features: Explores various theoretical, practical, and real-world applications of system analysis, design, and planning of urban water infrastructures Discusses hydrology, hydraulics, and basic laws of water flow movement through natural and constructed environments Describes a wide range of novel topics ranging from water assets, water economics, systems analysis, risk, reliability, and disaster management Examines the details of hydrologic and hydrodynamic modeling and simulation of conceptual and data-driven models Delineates flood resiliency, environmental visualization, pattern recognition, and machine learning attributes Explores a compilation of tools and emerging techniques that elevate the reader to a higher plateau in water and environmental systems management Water Systems Analysis, Design, and Planning: Urban Infrastructure serves as a useful resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in the areas of water resources and systems analysis, as well as practicing engineers and landscape professionals.