scholarly journals Water productivity accounting in Australian agriculture: The need for cost-informed decision-making

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne L Tingey-Holyoak ◽  
John Pisaniello ◽  
Peter Buss ◽  
Ben Wiersma

Primary producers need strategies and tools to assist in monitoring water use with a view to improving physical and financial productivity. The purpose of this research is to integrate farmer financial accounting data with soil moisture and climate data to better account for water use on farm. Farm-accounting systems, if present, lack the sophistication to allow growers to analyze use, loss, and productivity of water. Water-accounting technologies, if present, do not readily link to business systems to provide the optimal real-time financial decision-making data, nor the necessary context for new technologies to support a broader integrated approach to water management. Findings of desk-based technology benchmarking suggest elements required include real-time sensory data integration that allows for strategic allocation to the full suite of direct and indirect water costs. Key actor interview and producer surveys highlight demand for a farm business integrated water productivity tool and findings from field data collected in a potato case study provide demonstration of how irrigation decision-making can be supported by the crucial link between producers’ business systems and sensing technology.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-268
Author(s):  
Ángel H. Iglesias Alonso ◽  
Roberto L. Barbeito Iglesias

In 2015, the local government of the city of Madrid (Spain) introduced an electronic participation system. This initiative stemmed mainly from the social movements that had occupied the squares of many Spanish cities since 2011. As a result of the local elections in 2015, many of those same activists gained institutional power, took citizens’ participation very seriously, and decided to use the possibilities offered by the internet for political and administrative participation. In this article, we seek to assess the impacts of the Madrid city government with the e-democracy experiment – based mainly on establishing an online platform to facilitate citizen participation in political and administrative decision processes. Drawing on qualitative and documental data, our research indicates that whereas the overall aim of the project was to give citizens a say in local policy and decision making, our case study shows that participation was very low since most of the population does not feel concerned by these processes. Indeed, one of our findings showed that citizens’ involvement offline surpassed in some cases their online participation. To identify who is politically active online and offline is a great challenge, to which the promoters of the project did not pay much attention. Although e-participation was meagre in relation to the electoral turnout, the case study also shows that many proposals from the public were incorporated into the local policies, indicating that from a qualitative point of view, e-participation influences decision-making processes. Perhaps local governments should use a more strategic and integrated approach towards the use of electronic technologies to foster and motivate citizens’ involvement in local politics and administration. This more integrated approach should be less dependent on ideological incentives, more institutionalized, and must incorporate citizens’ perceptions and inputs before the introduction of new technologies.


Agronomy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Cambra Baseca ◽  
Sandra Sendra ◽  
Jaime Lloret ◽  
Jesus Tomas

New technologies have the potential to transform agriculture and to reduce environmental impact through a green revolution. Internet of Things (IoT)-based application development platforms have the potential to run farm management tools capable of monitoring real-time events when integrated into interactive innovation models for fertirrigation. Their capabilities must extend to flexible reconfiguration of programmed actions. IoT platforms require complex smart decision-making systems based on data-analysis and data mining of big data sets. In this paper, the advantages are demonstrated of a powerful tool that applies real-time decisions from data such as variable rate irrigation, and selected parameters from field and weather conditions. The field parameters, the index vegetation (estimated using aerial images), and the irrigation events, such as flow level, pressure level, and wind speed, are periodically sampled. Data is processed in a decision-making system based on learning prediction rules in conjunction with the Drools rule engine. The multimedia platform can be remotely controlled, and offers a smart farming open data network with shared restriction levels for information exchange oriented to farmers, the fertilizer provider, and agricultural technicians that should provide the farmer with added value in the form of better decision making or more efficient exploitation operations and management.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oki Maulidani ◽  
Pedro Escalona ◽  
Monica Paredes ◽  
Maria Sierra ◽  
Christian Bonilla ◽  
...  

Abstract The Covid-19 pandemic is an unprecedented condition to the global economy including the oil & gas industry. The ability to adapt to the imposed changes, requires creativity, innovation, digitalization of processes, and resilience. This work will show a novel integrated approach around four pillars which had improved operation efficiency and brought monetary value during a challenging 2020 in Shushufindi field, Ecuador. The first pillar is new technology adoption. This aims to extend run life of critical equipment resulting in a higher well productive time. Examples of adopted technology: Chrome-enrich tubulars, downhole microcaps chemical deployment, de-sander and multiphase/extended gas handler. The second pillar is the P3 process (Pre-Pulling-Post) to quickly and effectively find the root cause of well failure that leads to definite remedial action. Digital enabler is the third pillar, its value come from reducing operational downtime and risk by using real-time surveillance capability, remote control, and data intelligence. The final pillar is to re-establish an effective communication with all stakeholders. Various dashboards have been developed in order to provide the big picture of actual field condition in quickly manner as well as implementation of ESP real time surveillance & diagnostics, real time multiphase production test, and chemical treatment automation. Workshops, online technical, and service quality meetings are regularly conducted to ensure that recommendations and opportunities can be executed properly including contractual negotiations to enable new technology implementation. Despite all the restrictions during covid-19 pandemic and some force majeures in 2020, this integrated and digitalized approach has resulted an outstanding outcome: Well failure index reduced from 0.62 in 2019 to 0.41 in 2020; Production deferment related to well failure declined significantly from 2,420 bopd in 2019 to 1,259 bopd in 2020, which translate in savings of $16.8 million dollars. In addition to that, there was a reduction on operational cost from $26.3 million dollars in 2019 to $15.2 million dollars in 2020. This proven initiative has been supported and recognized by all stakeholders. Some new technologies and digitalization projects are in the process to be implemented in Shushufindi field as part of Ecuador digital strategy 2022. This successful integrated and digitalized approach can be adopted in other fields and will generate a huge business impact.


2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Hey ◽  
Panagiota Anastasopoulou ◽  
André Bideaux ◽  
Wilhelm Stork

Ambulatory assessment of emotional states as well as psychophysiological, cognitive and behavioral reactions constitutes an approach, which is increasingly being used in psychological research. Due to new developments in the field of information and communication technologies and an improved application of mobile physiological sensors, various new systems have been introduced. Methods of experience sampling allow to assess dynamic changes of subjective evaluations in real time and new sensor technologies permit a measurement of physiological responses. In addition, new technologies facilitate the interactive assessment of subjective, physiological, and behavioral data in real-time. Here, we describe these recent developments from the perspective of engineering science and discuss potential applications in the field of neuropsychology.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Amin Wibowo

Up to now, organizational buying is still interesting topic discussed. There are divergences among the findings in organizational buying researches. Different perspectives, fenomena observed, research domains and methods caused the divergences. This paper will discusse organizational buying behavior based on literature review, focused on behavior of decision making unit mainly on equipment buying. From this review literatures, it would be theoritical foundation that is valid and reliable to develop propositions in organizational buying behavior. Based on review literature refferences, variables are classified into: purchase situation, member of decision making unit perception, conflict among the members, information search, influences among members of decision making unit. Integrated approach is used to develop propositions relating to: purchasing complexity, sharing responsibility among the members, conflict in decision making unit, information search, time pressure as moderating variable between sharing responsibility and conflict in decision making unit, the influence among the members inside decision making unit and decision making outcome


Author(s):  
Shreyanshu Parhi ◽  
S. C. Srivastava

Optimized and efficient decision-making systems is the burning topic of research in modern manufacturing industry. The aforesaid statement is validated by the fact that the limitations of traditional decision-making system compresses the length and breadth of multi-objective decision-system application in FMS.  The bright area of FMS with more complexity in control and reduced simpler configuration plays a vital role in decision-making domain. The decision-making process consists of various activities such as collection of data from shop floor; appealing the decision-making activity; evaluation of alternatives and finally execution of best decisions. While studying and identifying a suitable decision-making approach the key critical factors such as decision automation levels, routing flexibility levels and control strategies are also considered. This paper investigates the cordial relation between the system ideality and process response time with various prospective of decision-making approaches responsible for shop-floor control of FMS. These cases are implemented to a real-time FMS problem and it is solved using ARENA simulation tool. ARENA is a simulation software that is used to calculate the industrial problems by creating a virtual shop floor environment. This proposed topology is being validated in real time solution of FMS problems with and without implementation of decision system in ARENA simulation tool. The real-time FMS problem is considered under the case of full routing flexibility. Finally, the comparative analysis of the results is done graphically and conclusion is drawn.


Author(s):  
Natalya Ivanovna Shaposhnikova ◽  
Alexander Aleksandrovich Sorokin

The article consideres the problems of determining the need to modernize the base stations of the cellular network based on the mathematical apparatus of the theory of fuzzy sets. To improve the quality of telecommunications services the operators should send significant funding for upgrading the equipment of base stations. Modernization can improve and extend the functions of base stations to provide cellular communication, increase the reliability of the base station in operation and the functionality of its individual elements, and reduce the cost of maintenance and repair when working on a cellular network. The complexity in collecting information about the equipment condition is determined by a large number of factors that affect its operation, as well as the imperfection of obtaining and processing the information received. For a comprehensive assessment of the need for modernization, it is necessary to take into account a number of indicators. In the structure of indicators of the need for modernization, there were introduced the parameters reflecting both the degree of aging and obsolescence(the technical gap and the backlog in connection with the emergence of new technologies and standards). In the process of a problem solving, the basic stages of decision-making on modernization have been allocated. Decision-making on the need for modernization is based not only on measuring information that takes into account the decision-makers, but also on linguistic and verbal information. Therefore, to determine the need for upgrading the base stations, the theory of fuzzy sets is used, with the help of which experts can be attracted to this issue. They will be able to formulate additional fuzzy judgments that help to take into account not only measuring characteristics, but also poorly formalized fuzzy information. To do this, the main indicators of the modernization need have been defined, and fuzzy estimates of the need for modernization for all indicators and a set of indicators reflecting the need for upgrading the base stations have been formulated.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Bushra Mahadin

Purpose-This paper aims to investigate factors that affect customer switching from Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles (ICEV’s) to Hybrid Electrical Vehicles (HEV’s), in Jordan for the period of (2010-2014).Design/methodology/approach-A self-administered survey was hand-delivered to the targeted sample of car users in Jordan. The authors delivered 400 questionnaires to customers, from which 333 were deemed valid for the analysis, corresponding to the percentage of (83.25%) which indicates the validity of the study. Findings- There was no difference in switching behavior between (ICEV’s) and (HEV’s) based on gender in the Jordanian market. Fuel consumption efficiency was the number one variable that supports the switching behavior towards (HEV's), followed by Eco friendliness, lower taxes and technological features. Price and the current trend in the market were the least supporting factors. In addition to that the perception of the battery life of (HEV's), limited choices in the market, lack of information and fear of the relatively new technology were the major hindering factors of choosing an (HEV).Research limitations-Future research needs to investigate other factors that may affect customers’ behavior such as perceived image, trust, and subjective norms. Future research should investigate into the importance of environmental awareness and new technologies, and gender differences in behavior. From an international marketing standpoint, comparative studies between Jordanian and non-Jordanian customers are potential areas of future research for international marketing strategies and cross-cultural consumer behaviour analysis. Practical implications-The paper identifies the determinants of switching behavior. marketers should focus addressing customers concerns in terms of providing enough information and building awareness towards the technology and it's benefits towards the society and the environment.Originality/value-Our study is one of the few in Jordan that investigates the switching behavior towards vehicles technology. Our study is thought to have made a modest contribution to consumer behaviour literature and, specifically, for decision making process. It offers marketers insights into the determinants of switching behavior towards the hybrid vechicle technology and how this contribute to consumers’ decision making process and attitudes to achieve the intended behavioural outcomes


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