scholarly journals Natural solutions versus technical solutions

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 261-282
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Ruijgrok
Keyword(s):  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Technical Solution ◽  
Flood Prevention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Engineering Costs ◽  
Technical Solutions ◽  
Engineering Projects ◽  
Ecosystem Benefits

‘Building with Nature’ solutions seem like a logical alternative to technical solutions. Working with nature instead of against it might save civil engineering costs. But will it also generate additional civil engineering benefits? Typical engineering benefits are related to flood prevention, transportation and sand mining. Both technical and natural solutions can produce these benefits. Natural solutions, however, may produce additional ecosystem benefits. These are rarely accounted for in investment decisions about engineering projects. This is not surprising as there are no rules stating that and how these benefits should be calculated. The Netherlands is the first country in Europe to install a national guideline for monetising ecosystem benefits within cost-benefit analyses in the public sector. This article shows how this guideline provides a systematic approach to prevent both over- and under-estimations of ecosystem benefits. The key to this approach is to make a distinction between goods and services that directly generate welfare while linking those to conditional functions that indirectly generate welfare. This approach is applied to flood defence in the Scheldt estuary in Belgium. It resulted in benefit estimates that were large enough to compensate for the extra cost of natural solutions. Taking ecosystem benefits into account influenced the flood protection decision of the national government: the natural ‘inundation areas’-solution was preferred to the technical solution of ‘dyke heightening’.

scholarly journals Application of Green Building Materials in Civil Engineering Construction

2021 ◽  
Vol 248 ◽  
pp. 03012
Author(s):  
Zhou Jia-yao
Keyword(s):  
Natural Environment ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Green Building ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Engineering Project ◽  
Engineering Construction ◽  
The Public ◽  
Green Building Materials ◽  
Engineering Projects

The continuous economic and social progress of our country has helped the rapid progress of civil engineering projects. However, the relatively improved civil engineering project creation also has many shortcomings, such as waste of resources, depletion, and pollution of the natural environment. The construction project itself is an item. The energy consumption is relatively high. Due to the shortage of resources and the more serious natural environment and ecological problems, the public pays more attention to the related problems of their own quality of life, and more and more people are adopting green building materials. Therefore, it is very important to explore the application of green building materials in civil engineering projects.

„BUDŽETIRANjE OD NULE“ KAO POLUGA EFEKTIVNOSTI JAVNIH USLUGA

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milivoje Lapčević ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Service System ◽  
Technical Solution ◽  
Public Budgeting ◽  
Budget Model ◽  
The Public ◽  
Classic Model ◽  
Goods And Services

In this paper, the author's attention will be paid to the analysis of the socalled " Zero-Base Budgeting ", in many ways a specific format of public budgeting. It is about the approach to public budgeting through was made the greatest shift in relation to the classic model of planning the financial coverage of public goods and services. The paper will indicate the extent to which the application of this budget model is appropriate to improve the quality of the public service system. The basic advantages that have popularized this budget technique in certain countries will be pointed out, as well as the reasons that influenced the national managers to give up from the full application of this budget-technical solution.

A4. UNRWA, IMPACT OF THE FIRST PHASE OF THE SECURITY BARRIER ON THE QALQILYA, TULKARM, AND JENIN DISTRICTS, GAZA CITY, JULY 2003 (EXCERPTS).

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Keyword(s):  
Civil Engineering ◽  
West Bank ◽  
The West ◽  
Full Report ◽  
The World ◽  
Aid Coordination ◽  
President Bush ◽  
Engineering Projects ◽  
The U.S

The separation wall, one of the largest civil engineering projects in Israel's history, has been criticized even by the U.S. administration, with Condoleezza Rice stating at the end of June 2003 that it ““arouses our [U.S.] deep concern”” and President Bush on 25 July calling it ““a problem”” and noting that ““it is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank.”” A number of reports have already been issued concerning the wall, including reports by B'Tselem (available at www.btselem.org), the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (available at www.palestinianaid.info), and the World Bank's Local Aid Coordination Committee (LACC; also available at www.palestinianaid.info). UNRWA's report focuses on the segment of the wall already completed and is based on field visits to the areas affected by the barriers, with a special emphasis on localities with registered refugees. Notes have been omitted due to space constraints. The full report is available online at www.un.org/unrwa.

scholarly journals Risk Assessment Framework to Avoid Serial Failure for New Technical Solutions Applied to the Construction of a CLT Structure Resilient to Climate

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 247
Author(s):  
Charlotte Svensson Tengberg ◽  
Carl-Eric Hagentoft
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Technical Solution ◽  
Functional Requirements ◽  
Assessment Framework ◽  
Construction Period ◽  
Design Build ◽  
Technical Solutions

Design-build contractors are challenged with the task of minimizing failure risks when introducing new technical solutions or adapting technical solutions to new conditions, e.g., climate change. They seem to have a disproportional trust in suppliers and their reference cases and might not have adequate resources or methodologies for sufficient evaluation. This creates the potential for serial failures to spread in the construction industry. To mitigate this, it was suggested that a predefined risk assessment framework should be introduced with the aim of providing a prequalification and requirements for the use of the technical solution. The objectives of this paper are to develop a comprehensive risk assessment framework and to explore the framework’s potential to adequately support the design-build contractor’s decisions. The framework uses qualitative assessment, relying on expert workshops and quantitative assessments, with a focus on simulation and probabilities. Tollgates are used to communicate risk assessments to the contractor. The framework is applied to a real-life case study of construction with a CLT-structure for a Swedish design-build contractor, where exposure to precipitation during construction is a key issue. In conclusion, the chosen framework was successful in a design-build contractor context, structuring the process and identifying difficulties in achieving the functional requirements concerning moisture. Three success factors were: documentation and communication, expert involvement, and the use of tollgates. Recommendations to the design-build contractor on construction of CLT structure are to keep construction period short and to use full weather protection on site.

scholarly journals Regional economic analysis of flood defence heights at the German Baltic Sea coast: A multi-method cost-benefit approach for flood prevention

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 100289
Author(s):  
Thomas van der Pol ◽  
Jochen Hinkel ◽  
Jan Merkens ◽  
Leigh MacPherson ◽  
Athanasios T. Vafeidis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Regional Economic ◽  
Flood Prevention ◽  
Regional Economic Analysis ◽  
Flood Defence ◽  
Sea Coast

Analysing SST 2.0 Tax Burden through the Element of Principle of Good Tax Policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-113
Author(s):  
Nur Erma Mohamed Jamel ◽  
Nadiah Abd Hamid ◽  
Sarini Azizan ◽  
Roshayani Arshad ◽  
Rani Diana Othman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Tax Policy ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Regressive Tax ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Economic Well Being

Since the 70s, the focus of the Malaysian government on sustainable development is to improve the economic well-being of its society. In September 2015, Malaysia reaffirmed this commitment with the other United Nations countries by implementing the 2030 Agenda for 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), focusing on the bottom 40% of households (B40). Unfortunately, the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on 1st April 2015, followed by Sales and Services Tax (SST) 2.0 on 1st September 2018 impacted all income groups especially B40. The public especially B40 claimed that indirect tax is regressive and burdensome (MIER, 2018). Hence, the present study aims to identify the existence of SST 2.0's tax burden assessing through the relationship between elements of guiding principles of good tax policy. Keywords: Sales and Service Tax, enforcement, regressive, tax burden, fairness.

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