DECISION SUPPORT TOOL TO EVALUATE OPTIONS FOR IMPLEMENTING A SHORT-DURATION VEHICLE CLASSIFICATION COUNT PROGRAM

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Puteri Paramita ◽  
Markus Fast ◽  
Giuseppe Grande ◽  
Jonathan D Regehr
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Short Duration ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Vehicle Classification ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Truck Traffic ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Resource Requirements ◽  
Program Options

A short‐duration vehicle classification count program provides essential data for developing a system‐wide understanding of truck traffic volume. In responding to increasingly urgent truck traffic data needs, transportation agencies face the challenge of implementing improvements with constrained resources. Within this context, this paper develops and applies a decision support tool that reveals trade-offs amongst program design parameters. The Tool enables decision‐makers to simultaneously consider two broad and inter‐related program objectives, namely, to achieve a target level of classification count coverage and to minimize changes in resource requirements. The Tool incorporates five decision input parameters (coverage, technology type, count duration, frequency, and counting cycle) and produces information concerning count accuracy, the number of equipment units required to implement the program, the classification counting season duration, costs, and considerations such as count redundancy and data timeliness. The paper presents Manitoba’s short-duration count program as a case study and evaluates three program options.

A decision-support tool to assist muscle-invasive bladder cancer patients choosing between radical cystectomy and chemoradiotherapy.

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (6_suppl) ◽  
pp. 505-505
Author(s):  
Brian Christopher Baumann ◽  
Wei-Ting Hwang ◽  
Sharadha Srinivasan ◽  
Xingmei Wang ◽  
Ronac Mamtani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bladder Cancer ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Muscle Invasive ◽  
Break Even Point

505 Background: Patients with high-risk muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) who are borderline medically operable for radical cystectomy (RC) face a difficult decision between RC which has higher short-term treatment-related morbidity/mortality & chemoradiotherapy (CRT) which is better tolerated in the short-term but may have worse long-term cancer control outcomes. There are no existing decision support tools to assist patients & providers in understanding these trade-offs. Herein, we developed a visualization tool to inform patients & providers how the relative risks & benefits of RC & CRT vary over time with respect to overall survival (OS). Methods: We identified cT2-3 N0 M0 urothelial bladder cancer patients ≥65 y/o treated with RC +/- chemo (n = 5981) or definitive-dose CRT after TURBT (n = 793) in the National Cancer Database, 2003-2011. The database was split into a development & validation cohort. Multivariate Cox regression with time-varying hazard ratio was performed to assess pre-treatment factors associated with OS. The inverse probability of treatment weighting method using the propensity score was employed to reduce selection bias. External validation was performed. Visualization tool showing adjusted survival curves based on pre-op patient features was generated with input from patients & a multidisciplinary expert panel. Tool calculates median OS & the “break-even point,” where the short-term OS disadvantage of RC equals the long-term advantage of RC (i.e. the point where the restricted mean survival for RC & CRT are equal). Results: On MVA, significant predictors of OS were age, Charlson Deyo comorbidity index, & cT stage (p < 0.001 for all). Using these results, we iteratively developed a web application that utilizes clinical inputs to generate patient-specific survival curves that display estimated OS differences over time. Median OS, the break-even point, & percent alive at the break-even point are provided. Conclusions: This is the first decision-support tool developed to assist high-risk borderline operable MIBC patients & their providers in understanding the short-term & long-term trade-offs between RC & CRT. Additional testing is underway.

scholarly journals A systematic conservation planning approach to maintaining ecosystem service provision in working landscapes

FACETS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1570-1600
Author(s):  
Jérôme Cimon-Morin ◽  
Jean-Olivier Goyette ◽  
Poliana Mendes ◽  
Stéphanie Pellerin ◽  
Monique Poulin
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Conservation Planning ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Efficient Production ◽  
Systematic Conservation Planning ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Working Landscapes ◽  
Trade Offs

Balancing human well-being with the maintenance of ecosystem services (ES) for future generations has become one of the central sustainability challenges of the 21st century. In working landscapes, past and ongoing production-centered objectives have resulted in the conversion of ecosystems into simple land-use types, which has also altered the provision of most ES. These inevitable trade-offs between the efficient production of individual provisioning ES and the maintenance of regulating and cultural ES call for the development of a land-use strategy based on the multifunctional use of the landscape. Due to the heterogeneous nature of working landscapes, both protection and restoration actions are needed to improve their multifunctionality. Systematic conservation planning (SCP) offers a decision support framework that can support landscape multifunctionality by indicating where ES management efforts should be implemented. We describe an approach that we developed to include ES provision protection and restoration objectives in SCP with the goal of providing ongoing benefits to society. We explain the general framework of this approach and discuss concepts, challenges, innovations, and prospects for the further development of a comprehensive decision support tool. We illustrate our approach with two case studies implemented in the pan-Canadian project ResNet.

scholarly journals A Holistic Decision Support Tool for Facade Design

Buildings ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. 186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kültür ◽  
Türkeri ◽  
Knaack
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Design Decision ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Acoustic Comfort

This paper presents a holistic decision support tool developed for use during the early stages of facade design. The tool is based on the interdependent relationships between facade performance, facade parameters, and conditions (environmental and spatial). It assumes that a decision maker has the ability to enhance the performance of a facade by making proper decisions on the design parameters in line with the conditions. However, since facade performance has various aspects (sometimes conflicting) to be considered at once, it is hard to predict the impacts of decisions on the overall performance. A single design decision may increase the performance in one aspect while decreasing it in other aspects. The tool aims to function as a guide to decision makers by indicating the impacts of design decisions on different functional aspects of facade performance from a holistic point of view. Functional requirements included within the tool are safety requirements such as structural stability and fire protection, health-related requirements such as weather protection (protection against water, air, and moisture), and requirements related to the well-being of the users such as thermal, visual, and acoustic comfort. Information provided in the tool is based upon an extensive literature review and structured as an Excel spreadsheet.

A decision-support tool for autumn management in a spring-calving pasture-based dairy system

2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (7) ◽  
pp. 1343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Neal ◽  
Jane Kay ◽  
Sally Peel ◽  
Sean McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Body Condition ◽  
Body Condition Score ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Current Season ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Milking Frequency ◽  
The Impact

Success in a pasture-based dairy system relies on matching feed supply and feed demand in a profitable manner. Autumn is an important period for decision making to maximise current-season profitability, while ensuring key targets such as cow body condition score and the level of average pasture cover are met for the upcoming season. There are many tactical management strategies for farmers to consider during autumn to ensure that profitability is maximised in the current and next season (e.g. feeding crops, purchasing or using available supplementary feeds, reducing milking frequency, grazing off young stock, culling, or drying off cows). The complexity of trade-offs among these factors from January to calving, and the need to assess the impact of each of these on seasonal profitability led to the development of the ‘DairyNZ Autumn Management Resource’. This resource is an energy-based model that calculates the profit from different management strategies in pasture-based spring-calving systems. Feed demand is initially set to ensure that target body condition is achieved for the next season, and can then be altered using variables such as milking frequency, number of cows in milk and stock grazing on-farm. The assumption is made that energy supply comes from grazed pasture and crop first, followed by conserved forages, with the opportunity to fill remaining gaps with purchased feed. The model is a decision-support resource for farmers during the autumn that compares the economics of different management strategies in the current season, while ensuring that the performance in the next season is not compromised.

scholarly journals Development and Application of a Multi-Objective-Optimization and Multi-Criteria-Based Decision Support Tool for Selecting Optimal Water Treatment Technologies in India

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 2836
Author(s):  
Seyed M. K. Sadr ◽  
Matthew B. Johns ◽  
Fayyaz A. Memon ◽  
Andrew P. Duncan ◽  
James Gordon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Water Treatment ◽  
Drinking Water Treatment ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Quality Parameters ◽  
Multi Objective Optimization ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Multi Objective ◽  
Trade Offs

Despite considerable efforts to improve water management, India is becoming increasingly water stressed due to multiple factors, including climate change, increasing population, and urbanization. We address one of the most challenging problems in the design of water treatment plants: how to select a suitable technology for a specific scenario or context. The process of decision making first requires the identification of feasible treatment configurations based on various objectives and criteria. In addition, the multiplicity of water quality parameters and design variables adds further complexity to the process. In this study, we propose a novel Decision Support Tool (DST), designed to address and support the above challenges. In this user-friendly tool, both Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and Multi-Objective Optimization (MOO) methods are employed. The integration of MCDA with MOO facilitates the generation of feasible drinking water treatment solutions, identifies optimal options, and ultimately, improves the process of decision making. This implemented approach has been tested for different contexts, including for different types of raw water sources and system implementation scales. The results show that this tool can enhance the process of decision making, supporting the user (e.g., stakeholders and decision makers) to implement the most suitable water treatment systems, keeping in view the trade-offs.

scholarly journals Public buying decisions: a framework for buyers and small firms

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mark McKevitt ◽  
Anthony Flynn ◽  
Paul Davis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Small Firms ◽  
Public Procurement ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Buying Decisions

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to explore the factors that influence buyer decision-making in public procurement. The objective is to better understand the processes and conditions that support different supply arrangements, which maximise SME participation. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses case study evidence of contract awards across multiple organisational contexts including: a local authority, commercial semi-state, police force, and a tourist agency. Findings – National policy and the role of procurement exerted mixed effects upon the cases. The procurement processes were broadly similar and included cross-functional teams, consideration of trade-offs and market research. Research limitations/implications – The paper highlights the transition of public organisations toward strategic procurement including supplier engagement. Practical implications – This offers buyers a decision support tool that promotes equal opportunities for SME participation, a key goal of EU procurement. The implications for suppliers of each buying decision are also outlined. The concept of practical rationality is used to support the framework. Originality/value – A normative framework of public procurement decision-making is generated from the cases. Buying complexity and supplier engagement are two conditions that support a 2×2 decision framework. The framework extends efficient and central-buying decisions to include adapted and balanced decisions. This range offers buyers a decision support tool that promotes equal opportunities for SME participation, a key goal of EU procurement. The implications for suppliers of each buying decision are discussed.

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