Quantifying the impact of freight transport performance on the total economic cost of cargo importers *

Author(s):  
Alwyn J. Hoffman
NeoBiota ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 79-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuya Watari ◽  
Hirotaka Komine ◽  
Elena Angulo ◽  
Christophe Diagne ◽  
Liliana Ballesteros-Mejia ◽  
...  

Despite the large body of knowledge recognising the impact of biological invasions on biodiversity, their economic impact has been less evaluated. However, the associated economic costs ought to provide useful information on many different aspects to prevent and manage invasions. Here, we describe the economic costs of biological invasions in Japan using InvaCost, a recently-published global database on monetary costs extracted from English and non-English sources, as well as a complementary search, thereby filling a gap in regional knowledge. We focused on the following four dimensions when analysing the economic costs of biological invasions: damage to biodiversity, damage to human livelihood, management for biodiversity and management for human livelihood. Interestingly, there was no information about biological invasion costs for Japan in English, but the Japanese search and our additional survey provided a total of 630 cost entries, with a total economic cost of 728 million USD (2017 value, equivalent to 62 billion JPY). These entries appeared in 33 documents and corresponded to a total of 54 species. We showed that: 1) damage costs from biological invasions tend not to be assessed as frequently as management costs and are more underestimated; 2) despite the numerous entries, an overwhelmingly limited amount of the management budget was allocated to biodiversity conservation compared to protecting human livelihood; 3) budgets have been intensively invested in invasive species management on small islands, which reflects the vulnerability of small island ecosystems and economies to biological invasions; 4) the recorded costs still seem to be greatly underestimated, mainly due to the lack of recording (and potentially limited access to recorded cost information). These findings are not only specific to Japan, but may also be widely applicable to most other countries. The future recording of economic costs will help to close the gap between actual and recorded costs, leading to more realistic guidelines for tackling biological invasions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-106
Author(s):  
S.N. GLAGOLEV ◽  
◽  
A.G. SHEVTSOVA ◽  
V.V. VASILEVA ◽  
◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Rosario Pastor ◽  
Noemi Pinilla ◽  
Josep A. Tur

Background: Adoption of a certain dietary pattern is determined by different factors such as taste, cost, convenience, and nutritional value of food. Objective: To assess the association between the daily cost of a diet and its overall quality in a cohort of 6–12-year-old Spanish schoolchildren. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on a cohort (n = 130; 47% female) of 6–12-year-old children schooled in primary education in the central region of Spain. Three-day 24 h records were administered, and the nutritional quality of the diet was also determined by means of Mediterranean Adequacy Index (MAI). A questionnaire on sociodemographic data, frequency of eating in fast-food restaurants, and supplement intake were also recorded. The person responsible for the child’s diet and the schooler himself completed the questionnaires, and homemade measures were used to estimate the size of the portions. Food prices were obtained from the Household Consumption Database of the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The economic cost of the diet was calculated by multiplying the amount in grams of the food consumed by each child by the corresponding price in grams and adding up the total amount for each participant. The total economic cost of the diet was calculated in €/day and in €/1000 kcal/day. Results: The area under the curve (AUC) for €/day and €/1000 kcal/day represent 62.6% and 65.6%, respectively. According to AUC values, adherence to Mediterranean diet (MD) is a moderate predictor of the monetary cost of the diet. A direct relationship between the cost of the diet and the adherence to MD was observed [OR (€/1000 kcal/day) = 3.012; CI (95%): 1.291; 7.026; p = 0.011]. Conclusions: In a cohort of Spanish schoolchildren with low adherence to the MD, a higher cost of the diet standardized to 1000 kcal was associated with above-average MAI values.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0734242X2098206
Author(s):  
Haijun Bi ◽  
Huabing Zhu ◽  
Jialin Zhan ◽  
Lei Zu ◽  
Yuxuan Bai ◽  
...  

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries contain metals, toxic electrolytes, organic chemicals and plastics that can lead to serious safety and environmental problems when they are improperly disposed of. The published literature on recovering spent LFP batteries mainly focuses on policy-making and conceptual design. The production line of recovering spent LFP batteries and its detailed operation are rarely reported. A set of automatic line without negative impact to the environment for recycling spent LFP batteries at industrial scale was investigated in this study. It includes crushing, pneumatic separation, sieving, and poison gas treatment processes. The optimum retaining time of materials in the crusher is 3 minutes. The release rate is the highest when the load of the impact crusher is 800 g. An air current separator (ACS) was designed to separate LFP from aluminium (Al) foil and LFP powder mixture. Movement behaviour of LFP powder and Al foil in the ACS were analysed, and the optimized operation parameter (35.46 m/s) of air current speed was obtained through theoretical analysis and experiments. The weight contents of an Al foil powder collector from vibrating screen-3 and LFP powder collector from bag-type dust collector are approximately 38.7% and 52.4%, respectively. The economic cost of full manual dismantling is higher than the recovery production line. This recycling system provides a feasible method for recycling spent LFP batteries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2239
Author(s):  
Marzena Kramarz ◽  
Edyta Przybylska

Multimodal freight transport in cities is a complex, valid, and vitally important problem. It is more seldom underlined in scientific studies and included in cities’ strategies that devote more attention to passenger transport than freight transport. The increased utilization of multimodal transport matches current transport policy and at the same time, it is one of the most important challenges put before cities striving to achieve sustainable development. In this case, the paper embarks upon the problem of relations between multimodal transport development and the sustainable development of the cities. The objective of the paper is an analysis of the impact of the selected city of the Upper Silesian metropolis on the development of multimodal freight transport and an assessment of the impact of the development of multimodal transport on the sustainable development of the cities of the Upper Silesian metropolis. The authors developed three research questions in order to implement the adopted objective. The process of looking for the answer included four stages. Within the first and second stages, the literature studies and experts’ research allowed for identifying key factors of the multimodal transport development that a city may have an impact on. In the third stage, the research was two-fold and was based on a questionnaire and scenario analysis. Due to the individual character of each of the cities, scenarios were developed for Katowice, being the main economic center of Upper Silesian and Zagłębie Metropolis. As a result of the research, factors have been identified that must be included in a strategy of a city that strives for sustainable development. The last stage of the research focused on the initial concept of the multimodal transport development impact assessment on sustainable development of the cities. Conclusions developed at individual stages allowed for answering the research questions.


Author(s):  
Parthkumar Patel ◽  
H.R. Varia

Safe, convenient and timely transportation of goods and passengers is necessary for development of nation. After independence road traffic is increased manifold in India. Modal share of freight transport is shifted from Railway to roadways in India. Road infrastructures continuously increased from past few decades but there is still need for new roads to be build and more than three forth of the roads having mixed traffic plying on it. The impact of freight vehicles on highway traffic is enormous as they are moving with slow speeds. Nature of traffic flow is dependent on various traffic parameters such as speed, density, volume and travel time etc. As per ideal situation these traffic parameters should remain intact, but it is greatly affected by presence of heavy vehicle in mixed traffic due to Svehicles plying on two lane roads. Heavy vehicles affect the traffic flow because of their length and size and acceleration/deceleration characteristics.  This study is aimed to analyse the impact of heavy vehicles on traffic parameters.


1995 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne S. Desarbo ◽  
Venkatram Ramaswamy ◽  
Rabikar Chatterjee

The authors propose a methodology for determining the segment-level impact of explanatory variables on multiple criterion measures obtained on a constant-sum scale. These explanatory variables could characterize different product, situation, or person related conditions that either occur naturally or are experimentally manipulated. Their proposed methodology simultaneously estimates market segment membership and multivariate segment-level parameters for each dependent criterion, using finite mixtures of conditional Dirichlet distributions. They conduct a modest Monte Carlo simulation analysis to investigate the performance of the proposed methodology. The authors also provide an empirical application to industrial buying decisions that examines the impact of the type of buying situation on multiple vendor selection criteria such as economic cost, functional performance, vendor cooperation, and vendor capability.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Borut Zgonc ◽  
Metka Tekavčič ◽  
Marko Jakšič

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