scholarly journals Nexus vs. Silo Investment Planning Under Uncertainty

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaël Payet-Burin ◽  
Mikkel Kromann ◽  
Silvio Pereira-Cardenal ◽  
Kenneth Marc Strzepek ◽  
Peter Bauer-Gottwein
Keyword(s):  
Transmission Lines ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Planning Problem ◽  
Planning Under Uncertainty ◽  
Carbon Taxes ◽  
Investment Planning ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Zambezi River

Water, energy, and agricultural infrastructure investments have important inter-relations fulfilling potentially competing objectives. When shaping investment plans, decision makers need to evaluate those interactions and the associated uncertainties. We compare planning infrastructure under uncertainty with an integrated water-energy-food nexus framework and with sector-centered (silo) frameworks. We use WHAT-IF, an open-source hydroeconomic decision support tool with a holistic representation of the power and agriculture sectors. The tool is applied to an illustrative synthetic case and to a complex planning problem in the Zambezi River Basin involving reservoirs, hydropower, irrigation, transmission lines and power plant investments. In the synthetic case, the nexus framework selects investments that generate more synergies across sectors. In sector-centered frameworks, the value of investments that impact multiple sectors (like hydropower, bioenergy, and desalinization) are under- or overestimated. Furthermore, the nexus framework identifies risks related to uncertainties that are not linked to the investments respective sectors. In the Zambezi river case, we find that most investments are mainly sensitive to parameters related to their respective sectors, and that financial parameters like discount rate, capital costs or carbon taxes are driving the feasibility of investments. However, trade-offs between water for irrigation and water for hydropower are important; ignoring trade-offs in silo frameworks increases the irrigation expansion that is perceived as beneficial by 22% compared to a nexus framework that considers irrigation and hydropower jointly. Planning in a nexus framework is expected to be particularly important when projects and uncertainties can considerably affect the current equilibrium.

Simulation in food catering industry. A dashboard of performance indicators

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Tufano ◽  
Riccardo Accorsi ◽  
Andrea Gallo ◽  
Riccardo Manzini
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
High Price ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Safety Control ◽  
Catering Industry ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Single Production

"Contract catering industry is concerned with the production of ready-to-eat meals for schools, hospitals and private companies. The structure of this market is highly competitive, and customers are rarely willing to pay a high price for this catering service. A single production sites may be demanded up to 10.000 meals per day and these operations can hardly be managed via rule of thumbs without any quantitative decision support tool. This situation is common at several stages of a food supply chain and the methodologies presented in this paper are addressed to any food batch production system with similar complexity and trade-offs. This paper proposes an original KPI dashboard, designed to control costs, time and quality efficiency and helping managers to identify criticalities. Special emphasis is given on food safety control which is the management’s main concern and must be carefully monitored in each stage of the production. To calculate the value of KPIs a Montecarlo simulation approach is used to deal with production complexity and uncertainty. A case study showcases the potential of simulation in this complex industrial field. The case study illustrates an application of the methodology on an Italian company suffering local recipe contamination. The company aims at defining the best standard for production, identifying cycles being sustainable from an economic and environmental point of view."

scholarly journals Decision Support Tool for Offshore Wind Farm Vessel Routing under Uncertainty

Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Dawid ◽  
David McMillan ◽  
Matthew Revie
Keyword(s):  
Wind Farm ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Synthetic Data ◽  
Optimal Solution ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Offshore Wind ◽  
Offshore Wind Farm ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Impact

This paper for the first time captures the impact of uncertain maintenance action times on vessel routing for realistic offshore wind farm problems. A novel methodology is presented to incorporate uncertainties, e.g., on the expected maintenance duration, into the decision-making process. Users specify the extent to which these unknown elements impact the suggested vessel routing strategy. If uncertainties are present, the tool outputs multiple vessel routing policies with varying likelihoods of success. To demonstrate the tool’s capabilities, two case studies were presented. Firstly, simulations based on synthetic data illustrate that in a scenario with uncertainties, the cost-optimal solution is not necessarily the best choice for operators. Including uncertainties when calculating the vessel routing policy led to a 14% increase in the number of wind turbines maintained at the end of the day. Secondly, the tool was applied to a real-life scenario based on an offshore wind farm in collaboration with a United Kingdom (UK) operator. The results showed that the assignment of vessels to turbines generated by the tool matched the policy chosen by wind farm operators. By producing a range of policies for consideration, this tool provided operators with a structured and transparent method to assess trade-offs and justify decisions.

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 Addressing transboundary conservation challenges through marine spatial prioritization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELENA GISSI ◽  
Jennifer McGowan ◽  
Chiara Venier ◽  
Davide Di Carlo ◽  
Francesco Musco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biodiversity Conservation ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Spatial Prioritization ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Maritime Industries

The Adriatic and Ionian Region (AIR) is an important area for both strategic maritime development and biodiversity conservation in the European Union (EU). However, given that both EU and non‐EU countries border the sea, multiple legal and regulatory frameworks operate at different scales which can hinder the coordinated long‐term sustainable development of the region. Transboundary marine (or maritime) spatial planning can help overcome these challenges by building consensus on planning objectives and making the trade‐offs between biodiversity conservation and its influence on economically important sectors more explicit. We approach this challenge by developing and testing four spatial prioritization strategies, using the decision‐support tool Marxan, which meets targets for biodiversity conservation whilst minimizing impacts to users. We evaluate these strategies in terms of how priority areas shift under different scales of target‐setting (e.g. regional versus country‐level). We also examine the trade‐off between cost‐efficiency and how equally solutions represent countries and maritime industries (N = 14) operating in the region using the Protection Equality metric. We show that there are negligible differences in where priority conservation areas are located when we set targets for biodiversity at the regional versus country scale. Conversely, the prospective impacts on industries, when considered as costs to be minimized, are highly divergent across scenarios and bias the placement of protection towards industries located in isolation or with few other industries. We conclude by making several recommendations to underpin future MSP efforts in the region, including the identification of: 1) areas of national significance, 2) transboundary areas requiring cooperation between countries, and 3) areas where impacts on maritime industries require careful consideration of the trade‐off between biodiversity conservation and socio‐economic objectives.

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 Analyzing the Impact of Renewable Energy Incentives and Parameter Uncertainties on Financial Feasibility of a Campus Microgrid

Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 2446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vu Hau ◽  
Munir Husein ◽  
Il-Yop Chung ◽  
Dong-Jun Won ◽  
William Torre ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Parameter Uncertainties ◽  
Project Investment ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Capital Costs ◽  
Financial Feasibility ◽  
The Impact

The popularity of microgrids is increasing considerably because of their environmental and technical advantages. However, the major challenge in microgrid integration is its financial feasibility due to high capital costs. To address this obstacle, renewable energy incentive programs, which are the motivation of this study, have been proposed in many countries. This paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of the technical and financial feasibility of a campus microgrid based on a techno-economic analysis using the Microgrid Decision Support Tool, which was implemented to support decision-making in the context of microgrid project investment. A method for microgrid design aiming to maximize system profitability is presented. The optimal microgrid configuration is selected depending on financial indices of the project, which directly address the returns on an investment. Most importantly, this analysis captures all the benefits of financial incentives for microgrid projects in California, U.S., which presents a key difference between the California market and other markets. The impact of incentives and uncertain financial parameters on the project investment is verified by sensitivity analysis. The outcomes show that the optimal configuration generates significant electricity savings, and the incentives strongly determine the financial feasibility and the optimal design of a microgrid.

scholarly journals Competition for marine space: modelling the Baltic Sea fisheries and effort displacement under spatial restrictions

2014 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 824-840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francois Bastardie ◽  
J. Rasmus Nielsen ◽  
O. R. Eigaard ◽  
H. O. Fock ◽  
P. Jonsson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Fishery Management ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Resource Dynamics ◽  
Maritime Spatial Planning ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Impact

AbstractMaritime spatial planning (MSP) and fishery management may generate extra costs for fisheries by constraining fishers activity with conservation areas and new utilizations of the sea. More energy-efficient fisheries are also likely to alter existing fishing patterns, which already vary from fishery to fishery and from vessel to vessel. The impact assessment of new spatial plans involving fisheries should be based on quantitative bioeconomic analyses that take into account individual vessel decisions, and trade-offs in cross-sector conflicting interests. We use a vessel-oriented decision-support tool (the DISPLACE model) to combine stochastic variations in spatial fishing activities with harvested resource dynamics in scenario projections. The assessment computes economic and stock status indicators by modelling the activity of Danish, Swedish, and German vessels (&gt;12 m) in the international western Baltic Sea commercial fishery, together with the underlying size-based distribution dynamics of the main fishery resources of sprat, herring, and cod. The outcomes of alternative scenarios for spatial effort displacement are exemplified by evaluating the fishers's abilities to adapt to spatial plans under various constraints. Interlinked spatial, technical, and biological dynamics of vessels and stocks in the scenarios result in stable profits, which compensate for the additional costs from effort displacement and release pressure on the fish stocks. The effort is further redirected away from sensitive benthic habitats, enhancing the ecological positive effects. The energy efficiency of some of the vessels, however, is strongly reduced with the new zonation, and some of the vessels suffer decreased profits. The DISPLACE model serves as a spatially explicit bioeconomic benchmark tool for management strategy evaluations for capturing tactical decision-making in reaction to MSP.

scholarly journals Framing Product Circularity Performance for Optimized Green Profit

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Saidani ◽  
Harrison Kim ◽  
Bernard Yannou ◽  
Yann Leroy ◽  
François Cluzel
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Optimization Model ◽  
Decision Support Tool ◽  
Profit Model ◽  
Support Tool ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Total Profit ◽  
Third Dimension ◽  
Circular Design ◽  
Practical Implications

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to develop and discuss a framework aiming at monitoring and optimizing the circularity performance of products for ensuring and facilitating green profit design trade-offs whilst meeting or anticipating end-of-life regulations during the design and development process of industrial products. The proposed framework is used to extend the Green Profit Model — an optimization model to maximize the total profit from the sales of new and remanufactured products, while achieving environmental impact savings — by adding a third dimension to this model, which is the circularity performance. As such, in addition to remanufacturing, it covers a wider spectrum of circular economy practices, leading to additional economic opportunities and environmental trade-offs between maintenance, reuse, remanufacturing and recycling at a product, parts and material levels. A first formulation of this extended optimization model is given and discussed through an illustrative example. By connecting the circularity performance of products with possible economic profit and environmental impact savings, it thus contributes in advancing the understanding and linkages in the area of circular design, life cycle analysis, industrial decision-support tool, and environmental regulations. Concretely, practical implications for both design engineering and green policy making are highlighted.

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.

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