Evaluation of the effect of JSC RZD transportation infrastructure availability on the risks of losses in the process of transportation

Aim. The availability of transportation infrastructure facilities affects the quality of the transportation services provided by JSC RZD. At the same time, this effect may significantly differ depending on the operating conditions of the transportation infrastructure or a specific railway line and can cause various degrees of risk of damage to the transportation process. Such risks are defined as risks of train-hour losses due to transportation infrastructure failures. Planning dependability management activities under conditions of scarce resources requires targeted identification of the transportation infrastructure facilities whose availability most significantly affects the magnitude of the risks of damage to the transportation process. The aim of the paper is to develop a method for evaluating daily availability and identifying its correlation with the risk of train-hour losses. Methods. The authors used the methods of risk management, probability theory and mathematical statistics, correlation and regression analysis. Results. The paper suggests representing the daily availability indicator of JSC RZD’s transportation infrastructure facilities as a two-parameter gamma distribution and describing its effect on the risks of the transportation process with a regression model. Conclusions. The paper’s findings can be used as part of transportation infrastructure dependability planning and targeted allocation of resources, as well as for substantiating the dependability indicator when evaluating the practical capacity of railway lines and utilization ratio and in a number of other operational tasks.

NZ Inc: New Zealand’s Whole-of-Government Approach to Peace Support Operations

<p>Into the late 1990s the international community began to develop new methods for assisting fragile states. It was recognised that development principles and practice were often insufficient to resolve the ‘complex operations’ they were entering. This was especially true when engaging states that lacked either the political commitment or the practical capacity to deliver basic social and public services. The defining feature of these operations is that assistance is required across all pillars of civil society – economic, law and justice, governance and public administration. Without effectively addressing each of these pillars there is a significant risk of systemic failure. A key challenge of engagement across these pillars is coordinating the growing number of contributions – both civilian and military. The whole-of-government approach has been promoted as a method to ameliorate this challenge. It is argued that the approach reduces departmental silos, promotes policy coherence, and provides efficiency while better addressing the complexity of the operating environment. While this may be true, the rhetoric is ill-defined and generates confusion as to what it means at a practical level. In short, it remains unclear how to achieve an efficient and effective whole-of-government approach or what that would actually look like. This thesis examines this dilemma and identifies the factors for successful implementation of New Zealand’s whole-of-government approach to peace support operations. Rather than concentrating on the formerly popular ‘machinery of government’ changes, this thesis argues that there are three overarching factors when implementing a whole-of-government approach. The first requirement is strategic direction from Government. This should come in the form of a national security statement and subsidiary individual country strategies. The second is culture change across the public sector. This focuses on the ‘soft issues’ such as organisational cultures, values and routines, professional beliefs, as well as institutional values and preferences. Significantly for peace support operations, this must be extended to promote a culture of education and awareness of host nation history and society. The third factor is accurate and flexible performance indicators and measurement to ensure that success can be identified and achieved. Effective execution of these factors will add value and promote excellence in New Zealand’s peace support operations.</p>

NZ Inc: New Zealand’s Whole-of-Government Approach to Peace Support Operations

<p>Into the late 1990s the international community began to develop new methods for assisting fragile states. It was recognised that development principles and practice were often insufficient to resolve the ‘complex operations’ they were entering. This was especially true when engaging states that lacked either the political commitment or the practical capacity to deliver basic social and public services. The defining feature of these operations is that assistance is required across all pillars of civil society – economic, law and justice, governance and public administration. Without effectively addressing each of these pillars there is a significant risk of systemic failure. A key challenge of engagement across these pillars is coordinating the growing number of contributions – both civilian and military. The whole-of-government approach has been promoted as a method to ameliorate this challenge. It is argued that the approach reduces departmental silos, promotes policy coherence, and provides efficiency while better addressing the complexity of the operating environment. While this may be true, the rhetoric is ill-defined and generates confusion as to what it means at a practical level. In short, it remains unclear how to achieve an efficient and effective whole-of-government approach or what that would actually look like. This thesis examines this dilemma and identifies the factors for successful implementation of New Zealand’s whole-of-government approach to peace support operations. Rather than concentrating on the formerly popular ‘machinery of government’ changes, this thesis argues that there are three overarching factors when implementing a whole-of-government approach. The first requirement is strategic direction from Government. This should come in the form of a national security statement and subsidiary individual country strategies. The second is culture change across the public sector. This focuses on the ‘soft issues’ such as organisational cultures, values and routines, professional beliefs, as well as institutional values and preferences. Significantly for peace support operations, this must be extended to promote a culture of education and awareness of host nation history and society. The third factor is accurate and flexible performance indicators and measurement to ensure that success can be identified and achieved. Effective execution of these factors will add value and promote excellence in New Zealand’s peace support operations.</p>

Алгоритм оцінювання частоти комплексного гармонічного сигналу з сегментацією даних спостережень

The article deals with the technology of estimating the frequency of harmonic components in the presence of additive normal interferences for solving applied problems of spectral analysis. Objective: to develop a methodology for the synthesis of algorithms for determining the frequency of a complex harmonic signal in discrete sections of the process, this is observed when using data segmentation. Objective: to develop the optimal technology for determining the frequency of the hormonal component of the process, provided by a finite number of discrete compartments, according to model representations and requirements that meet the problems of the current state of spectral analysis practice. These results were obtained. The problem of estimating the harmonic frequency from segmented data in the presence of additive Gaussian interference in observations based on the method of maximum likelihood is solved. The processing algorithm and the consequences of digital modeling of the synthesized evaluation technology for a given number of discrete process samples are given. The analysis of both the practical capacity of the technology for determining the assessment and certain qualitative indicators of assessment is performed. Conclusions. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is as follows: further development as a method for solving problems of estimating the frequency of the harmonic signal from a few sample values of the process under conditions of additive normal interference and methods for optimizing the structure of digital processing of observations in data segmentation. The synthesized technology uses one sample of observations to determine the estimates, which ensure the efficiency of information processing in a simple software implementation. The use of segmentation in the technological process of digital processing of observations allows obtaining estimates, the quality of which corresponds to the indicators of maximum likelihood. For unambiguous assessment, there is a need to eliminate ambiguity. Under these conditions, the technology with a given number of samples can significantly solve the range of signal-to-noise ratios at which can be obtained unbiased estimates.

Social distancing in America: Understanding long-term adherence to COVID-19 mitigation recommendations

A crucial question in the governance of infectious disease outbreaks is how to ensure that people continue to adhere to mitigation measures for the longer duration. The present paper examines this question by means of a set of cross-sectional studies conducted in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, in May, June, and July of 2020. Using stratified samples that mimic the demographic characteristics of the U.S. population, it seeks to understand to what extent Americans continued to adhere to social distancing measures in the period after the first lockdown ended. Moreover, it seeks to uncover which variables sustained (or undermined) adherence across this period. For this purpose, we examined a broad range of factors, relating to people’s (1) knowledge and understanding of the mitigation measures, (2) perceptions of their costs and benefits, (3) perceptions of legitimacy and procedural justice, (4) personal factors, (5) social environment, and (6) practical circumstances. Our findings reveal that adherence was chiefly shaped by three major factors: respondents adhered more when they (a) had greater practical capacity to adhere, (b) morally agreed more with the measures, and (c) perceived the virus as a more severe health threat. Adherence was shaped to a lesser extent by impulsivity, knowledge of social distancing measures, opportunities for violating, personal costs, and descriptive social norms. The results also reveal, however, that adherence declined across this period, which was partly explained by changes in people’s moral alignment, threat perceptions, knowledge, and perceived social norms. These findings show that adherence originates from a broad range of factors that develop dynamically across time. Practically these insights help to improve pandemic governance, as well as contributing theoretically to the study of compliance and the way that rules come to shape behavior.

Analysing and modeling performances of a long-haul air route network

This paper deals with analyzing and modelling performances of a long-haul air route network operating as the queuing network. The network consists of the routes/tracks with flight levels serving aircraft/flights as the service channels. The main network performances are the ultimate and practical capacity of service channels, the aircraft/flight demand, delays before entering and total time of aircraft/flights spending in the network, and the related generalized costs including those of airlines, air passengers, policy makers and society. The analytical models of the particular network performances and three routing or assignment models/procedures for matching the aircraft/flight demand to capacity are developed and applied to the long-haul air route network in the North Atlantic airspace between Europe and North America. The results have indicated that. the network capacity has been strongly dependent on the number of routes/tracks and flight levels, i.e., service channels and their ultimate and/or practical capacity. The ultimate capacity has been mainly influenced by the ATC (Air Traffic Control) separation rules applied between aircraft/flights operating in the same directions. The practical capacity has been strongly influenced by the ultimate capacity and the average delays imposed on aircraft/flights before entering the network. The rather superior and close to optimal model/procedure for matching demand to capacity has been routing or assignment of the aircraft/flights demand in proportion to the ultimate or practical capacity of particular service channels minimizing the total generalized costs of the actors/stakeholders involved.

MANAGING AND TEACHING OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AND SECURITY EDUCATION AT INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY IN THE DIRECTION OF DEVELOPING PRACTICAL CAPACITY - THE CURRENT SITUATION AND THE PROBLEMS RAISED

National defense and security education for students is one of the contents of the human training strategy, aimed at training new and qualified people to perform two tasks: construction and defend the Socialist Vietnam Fatherland. It is very important and necessary to research the teaching management of national defense - security education for students of Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City in the direction of developing practical capacity. The author of the article has investigated the current situation of teaching management in defense and security education at the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City in the direction of developing practical capacity, analyzing strengths, analyzing weaknesses, causes of the situation and the problems posed.

Constructing a new cost structure using time-driven activity-based costing for replanting at palm oil plantation

The palm oil industry in Malaysia is undeniably the pride of the country. However, in this plantation there are currently few issues which do not set up a time equation to interpret the variance of activities, the rate setting did not illustrate the correlation between the resources provided and the practical capacity, and the manager had no tool in place to monitor the unused capacity. In order to increase precision in the field of palm oil plantation, this work aims to develop a new cost structure. Time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) has been introduced because it allows time output to be efficiently assessed, the idle capacity accurately defined, and the unused capacity separately to be recorded. This provides an overview of functional tools and their associated costs as well as measurement methods and facilitates quality improvement. This work focused only on replanting field and the plantation located in Pahang. The maximum replanting capacity cost rate (CCR), with 288600 minutes and 0.106 RM / minute, was subsequently successfully developed. Finally, the manager can observe that 68358.45 minutes of utilized capacity could be used for the systematic development of replanting capacity planning.

Development a new costing structure using time driven activity-based costing for palm oil plantation

Palm oil is one of the world's most traded farming commodities. The Malaysian palm oil industry is without a doubt to the nation's pride. However, there are few problems currently happen in this plantation which are no establishment of time equation to interpret deviation of activities, the rate establishment did not properly illustrate the correlation between supplied resources and practical capacity, and the manager did not have a tool to monitor the unused capacity. The aim of this work is to develop a new costing structure for a better accuracy specifically at nursery. Time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) was applied because it can effectively measure the time efficiency, accurately identifies the idle capacity and separately lists the used and unused capacity. It also provides more comprehensive understanding of practical resources and its associated costs while measuring processes and encouraging quality improvement. The plantation located at Pahang which has three main divisions and this work was focussing on nursery only. This work found that a precise process mapping for nursery was developed to understand their specific sequence which contributes to time equations. Subsequently, the total used capacity and capacity cost rate (CCR) for pre-nursery was successfully developed with 98220 minutes and 0.168 RM/minute respectively. Eventually, the manager can observe that actually the unused capacity was 37515.31 min which can be used to systematically develop the capacity planning on the pre-nursery.