Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Local decision system'

“Development” embodies the yearning of the present time. However, what is understood by development has been varying over time. It can be said that the concept has evolved from a markedly economic meaning to one with a considerable social and human component that therefore includes an environmental value. This has a substantial connotation. Because it concerns people’s goals and achievements, the concept, in terms of its use in management, applies specifically to a territory. In consequence, development is strongly related to its spatial nuance. In the early 21st century, in a context of globalization and expanding frontiers, local development is more likely to achieve a greater success. Analogously, today human thought evolution manages to dissociate itself from more than four centuries of tradition. Rationalism, reductionism and empirical thought give way to an ample vision of “the whole” that requires the incorporation of complexity. The systems, the relations more than the parts, the synergies, among other elements, become fundamental to facing the new challenges of the present time. This is the case of sustainability. This conceptual framework is what is now used in the design and implementation of public policies. They deal with people, the environment, what is local and what is global, the market, the resources, with temporality. All are one element in a changing, assiduously dynamic reality that requires new tools to confront it. Local governments, as development “agents”, consciously address this yawning variety. Different tools have arisen to manage the inclusion of complexity and to support local governments in their task. Local development in Chile has had its own records. Morphology and history have affected its background, carried out inefficiencies in the traditional management system of the local development. A progress in these matters calls for the incorporation of new tools, which strengthen governance, accountability and legitimacy. Hence, Chilean local management needs an improvement for accurate, participatory, flexible, coherent, operative and strategic planning, of the decision-making process. The research is carried out in this context. It proposes a methodology that interprets a social process that reinforces the participative democracy, transparency, coherence, and which engages ethical positions. It looks to improve the quality of the political process, gathering in the development duty the citizenry and the public, by the construction of local agenda. The research gives way to a project which aims at improving current local development management in the Chilean perspective, proposing the reinforcement of instruments in order to achieve its goals, within the framework of a sustainable perspective. The proposal intends to overhaul the Chilean planning development instrument approaching procedures (how to do) by a flexible decisions support tool. In other words, to position the Communal Development Plan (PLADECO) as the Mayor’s agenda during his term in office, incorporating the community into political decisions. The proposal is carried out through cooperation between the United Nations Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean and the Subsecretariat of Regional and Administrative Development of the Government of Chile. It involves the Regional Governments and is implemented in four Municipalities of Chile.
Lo sviluppo rappresenta uno degli impegni più gravosi del nostro tempo. Tuttavia, il concetto di “sviluppo” continua a variare. Se può affermare che ha evoluto di un significato prettamente economico a una concezione con una componente sociale e umana predominante, che tiene in considerazione il valore dell'ambiente. Questo passaggio ha un’importanza cruciale. Nello specifico, il concetto di sviluppo è legato agli obiettivi e ai risultati di una società composta di persone, ed è quindi applicato a un ambito di azione limitato, ovvero ad un particolare territorio. All’inizio del 21° secolo, in un contesto di globalizzazione e di espansione delle frontiere, la forte connotazione spaziale del concetto di sviluppo decreta il successo delle azioni portate avanti a livello locale. Analogamente, oggi lo sviluppo del pensiero umano è riuscito a dissociarsi da più di quattro secoli di tradizione. Il pensiero cartesiano, riduzionista ed empirico conducono ad un'ampia visione “del tutto" che richiede l'incorporazione della complessità. I sistemi, i rapporti e i sinergismi, tra altri, diventano alcuni degli elementi fondamentali ad affrontare le nuove sfide del tempo attuale. Qui entra in gioco il concetto di sostenibilità. Quest’approccio viene applicato per la definizione e l’implementazione di politiche pubbliche, che affrontano questioni legate alla popolazione, all’ambiente, a problemi a livello locale e globale, al mercato, alla gestione delle risorse. Tutte fanno parte di una realtà dinamica e mutevole, la cui gestione sempre i nuovi strumenti per confrontarla. Approcci e strumenti specifici sono quindi stati definiti per sostenere gli Enti Locali, quali principali “agenti" dello sviluppo nella gestione quotidiana di problematiche complesse. In Cile lo sviluppo locale ha seguito un percorso indipendente. Sia la morfologia del territorio che la storia del Paese hanno contribuito a creare una situazione che rivela le inefficienze nel sistema tradizionale di gestione dello sviluppo locale. Un effettivo progresso richiede l'incorporazione dei nuovi strumenti, allo scopo di rafforzare la governance, l'accountability e la legittimità. Quindi, la gestione dello sviluppo locale cileno necessita di un importante intervento per essere in grado di definire e sostenere processi decisionali accurati, partecipati, flessibili e coerenti. Questo è il contesto della presente ricerca, che propone una metodologia per interpretare un processo sociale allo scopo di una democrazia partecipativa, trasparenza e coerenza, di tenere in considerazione. In questo modo si cerca di migliorare la qualità del processo politico, guidando la cittadinanza e le istituzioni nel processo di sviluppo, tramite la definizione di un'agenda locale. La ricerca è stata applicata a un miglioramento della gestione dello sviluppo locale in Cile. Propone l’applicazione e il potenziamento di strumenti ad hoc per realizzare i obiettivi specifici, nel quadro di una prospettiva sostenibile. La proposta intende revisionare e facilitare l'applicazione dello strumento cileno di pianificazione dello sviluppo locale, promuovendo procedure tramite da un approccio flessibile di supporto decisionale. In tal modo il progetto vuole inserire il Programma di Sviluppo Comunale (PLADECO) nell’agenda dei Sindaci durante il loro mandato, includendo la comunità nelle decisioni politiche. Il progetto è stato realizzato in quattro Comuni del Cile tramite la partecipazione attiva dei Governi Regionali, ed è stato sviluppato in collaborazione con la Commissione Economica delle Nazioni Unite di America Latina e dei Caraibi e il Sottosegretariato dello Sviluppo Regionale ed Amministrativo del Governo del Cile.
El “desarrollo” sigue representando el anhelo de la actualidad. No obstante, lo que se entiende por desarrollo ha ido variando en el tiempo. Se puede afirmar que el concepto ha evolucionado de una acepción marcadamente económica a un concepto con una gran componente social, humana, y a una intertemporalidad, poniendo de manifiesto el valor del medio ambiente. Esto tiene una connotación de suma importancia. Al hablar de sociedad compuesta por personas, se lleva el concepto a una aplicabilidad acotada a un escenario de acción, es decir, a un territorio. Así se encuentra hoy al desarrollo fuertemente ligado a su connotación espacial, donde en el contexto de inicios del siglo XXI, de la globalización y ampliación de las fronteras, es el desarrollo local el que alcanza el mayor éxito. Análogamente, la evolución en el pensamiento humano no ha estado exenta de importantes cambios que logran disociarse de más de cuatro siglos de herencia. El pensamiento cartesiano, reduccionista y empírico, da paso a una visión más amplia del todo, que requiere la incorporación de la complejidad. Los sistemas, las relaciones más que las partes, las sinergias, pasan a ser aspectos fundamentales para enfrentar los nuevos desafíos de la actualidad. Este es el caso de la “sostenibilidad”. Resulta éste el escenario de las políticas públicas, que tratan con personas, con el entorno, con lo global y lo local, con el mercado, con los recursos, con una temporalidad, todo parte de una realidad cambiante, asiduamente dinámica que requiere nuevas herramientas para enfrentarla. Los Gobiernos Locales, en su labor de agentes del desarrollo, están cada vez más conscientes de esta profunda complejidad, observación que ha tenido importantes implicancias en las políticas públicas. De esta forma han surgido diferentes instrumentos y herramientas que buscan responder a estas necesidades y apoyar a los Gobiernos en su misión. El desarrollo local en Chile ha seguido su propio recorrido. Tanto la morfología como su historia han influenciado un desenlace que revela ineficiencias en el sistema tradicional de gestión del desarrollo. Para avanzar en estas materias se requiere de la incorporación de nuevas herramientas que consoliden la gobernanza, la rendición de cuentas y la legitimidad. De este modo, la gestión del desarrollo local chileno apela a una mejora en la operatividad, participación, flexibilidad, coherencia y visión estratégica del proceso de toma de decisiones. Éste es el contexto en el cual se enmarca el presente estudio, donde se propone una metodología que interprete el proceso social donde se refuercen la democracia participativa, la transparencia, la coherencia y se involucren posiciones éticas. Así, se busca mejorar la calidad del proceso político, coaccionando a la ciudadanía y a los distintos niveles gubernamentales en la tarea del desarrollo, mediante la construcción de la agenda local. La investigación da paso a un proyecto que busca mejorar la gestión del desarrollo local en la perspectiva chilena, proponiendo reforzar los instrumentos existentes para alcanzar estos objetivos bajo una perspectiva de sostenibilidad. La propuesta realiza una revisión del instrumento de planificación del desarrollo local Chileno promoviendo procedimientos (cómo hacer) mediante una herramienta flexible de apoyo a la toma de decisiones. En otras palabras, posicionar el Plan de Desarrollo Comunal (PLADECO) de modo que represente la agenda de acciones del Alcalde durante su período ejercicio, la cual considere a la comunidad en las decisiones políticas. La propuesta se desarrolla a través una cooperación conjunta entre la Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe de Naciones Unidas y la Subsecretaría de Desarrollo Regional y Administrativo del Gobierno de Chile, involucra a los Gobiernos Regionales y se implementa en cuatro Municipios de Chile.

This research addressed a major and widespread problem in the NHS: information for operational planning. The approach has been to analyse the needs of management in this field in a particular health district and to develop a system in response to these needs of use in the particular District and generally in the NHS. The emphasis had been on the identification and quantification of relationships between elements of the District important to corporate planning, so that the feasibility and effects of planning choices can be assessed. Particular attention has been paid to the attitudes, values and concerns of senior managers and doctors in the NHS throughout the project. Research began in October 1979 on the development of a database and model of the former North East District of KCWAHA. This health district contained a large undergraduate teaching hospital (The Middlesex), two large psychiatric hospitals, and several smaller specialist hospitals. The purpose of the decision-support system is to enable management to explore rapidly the implications of operational planning optlons over several years. It does not recommend which option should be followed. Plans are tested in terms of the bed capacity of general wards and specialist units. The revenue costs of an option are estimated using a detailed analysis of which types of change cause which types of cost to vary within the District. The model then assesses the non-financial consequences for the operating theatres and service departments, and the effects on nurse training. The research has shown that it is feasible to build and maintain such a model and database with very limited clerical support. The output from the system has been found useful by management. This development has generated considerable support for further research. The assumptions of the model and the procedures for updating the database are fully documented. Procedures for implementing the system in another health district are also available. The model runs on the computer at Imperial College, University of London. The research programme continues with the extension of the model to cover the whole of the new Bloomsbury District (including University College Hospital), where the use of the system has had a substantial impact on decisionmaking at the most senior level.

Clinical diagnosis of chronic disease is a vital and challenging research problem which requires intensive clinical practice guidelines in order to ensure consistent and efficient patient care. Conventional medical diagnosis systems inculcate certain limitations, like complex diagnosis processes, lack of expertise, lack of well described procedures for conducting diagnoses, low computing skills, and so on. Automated clinical decision support system (CDSS) can help physicians and radiologists to overcome these challenges by combining the competency of radiologists and physicians with the capabilities of computers. CDSS depend on many techniques from the fields of image acquisition, image processing, pattern recognition, machine learning as well as optimization for medical data analysis to produce efficient diagnoses. In this dissertation, we discuss the current challenges in designing an efficient CDSS as well as a number of the latest techniques (while identifying best practices for each stage of the framework) to meet these challenges by finding informative patterns in the medical dataset, analysing them and building a descriptive model of the object of interest and thus aiding in medical diagnosis. To meet these challenges, we propose an extension of conventional clinical decision support system framework, by incorporating artificial immune network (AIN) based hyper-parameter optimization as integral part of it. We applied the conventional as well as optimized CDSS on four case studies (most of them comprise medical images) for efficient medical diagnosis and compared the results. The first key contribution is the novel application of a local energy-based shape histogram (LESH) as the feature set for the recognition of abnormalities in mammograms. We investigated the implication of this technique for the mammogram datasets of the Mammographic Image Analysis Society and INbreast. In the evaluation, regions of interest were extracted from the mammograms, their LESH features were calculated, and they were fed to support vector machine (SVM) and echo state network (ESN) classifiers. In addition, the impact of selecting a subset of LESH features based on the classification performance was also observed and benchmarked against a state-of-the-art wavelet based feature extraction method. The second key contribution is to apply the LESH technique to detect lung cancer. The JSRT Digital Image Database of chest radiographs was selected for research experimentation. Prior to LESH feature extraction, we enhanced the radiograph images using a contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) approach. Selected state-of-the-art cognitive machine learning classifiers, namely the extreme learning machine (ELM), SVM and ESN, were then applied using the LESH extracted features to enable the efficient diagnosis of a correct medical state (the existence of benign or malignant cancer) in the x-ray images. Comparative simulation results, evaluated using the classification accuracy performance measure, were further benchmarked against state-of-the-art wavelet based features, and authenticated the distinct capability of our proposed framework for enhancing the diagnosis outcome. As the third contribution, this thesis presents a novel technique for detecting breast cancer in volumetric medical images based on a three-dimensional (3D) LESH model. It is a hybrid approach, and combines the 3D LESH feature extraction technique with machine learning classifiers to detect breast cancer from MRI images. The proposed system applies CLAHE to the MRI images before extracting the 3D LESH features. Furthermore, a selected subset of features is fed to a machine learning classifier, namely the SVM, ELM or ESN, to detect abnormalities and to distinguish between different stages of abnormality. The results indicate the high performance of the proposed system. When compared with the wavelet-based feature extraction technique, statistical analysis testifies to the significance of our proposed algorithm. The fourth contribution is a novel application of the (AIN) for optimizing machine learning classification algorithms as part of CDSS. We employed our proposed technique in conjunction with selected machine learning classifiers, namely the ELM, SVM and ESN, and validated it using the benchmark medical datasets of PIMA India diabetes and BUPA liver disorders, two-dimensional (2D) medical images, namely MIAS and INbreast and JSRT chest radiographs, as well as on the three-dimensional TCGA-BRCA breast MRI dataset. The results were investigated using the classification accuracy measure and the learning time. We also compared our methodology with the benchmarked multi-objective genetic algorithm (ES)-based optimization technique. The results authenticate the potential of the AIN optimised CDSS.

The lack of smart resources management and servicescape strategies within the social housing sector in the late 1970s influenced the rise of successive Governments to consider the restructuring of the traditional ‘cumbersome’ Local Authority based structures and approaches toward more ‘enterprise focussed’ management organisations (Sharp & Jones 2012). This change in central Government policy encouraged Local Authorities to assign through outsourcing their housing stock (including associated asset management services) as part of a Large Scale Voluntary Transfer (LSVT) via a process of compulsory competitive tendering to Housing Associations and/or set up Housing Trusts to increase the accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness of social housing and healthcare provision in the local community. As part of this modernisation process, all social housing and community care providers (also known as ‘Registered Social Landlords’ - RSLs) became subject to statutory audits, inspections and regulation, and performance management, to ensure the service quality delivery requirements. More recently, however, changes in the legislative framework have introduced choice-based letting policy, putting the customer first, service delivery and additionally RSLs are required to act as ‘Corporate Social Landlords’. These changes have focused RSLs attention on the need to sharpen service responsiveness, especially in the area of housing maintenance management (DETR 2000). Previous research (Holmes 1985; Spedding 1990; Johnston 1993; Stewart & Stoker 1995; Olubodun 1996, 2000, 2001; Sagoo et al. 1996; El-Haram & Horner 2002; Kangwa & Olubodun 2003, 2005; Boussabaine & Kirkham 2004; Jones & Cooper 2007; Prowle 2009; Babangida et al. 2012) has mainly concentrated on analysing maintenance management factors at the micro level; developing maintenance models and framework design for operational level. However, in the social housing sector, there have been no studies undertaken to date that have been focused on housing maintenance strategies – for example, how this is formulated, the key drivers of change and the impact on customer orientated service delivery. The purpose of this study is to identify the critical factors that drive the decision-making process in order to formulate responsive housing maintenance strategies and to develop a decision support model to improve customer service delivery of social housing provision. Research methodology Through a process of qualitative case study, pilot questionnaire surveys, workshops and qualitative in-depth interviews, the research has identified how the housing maintenance strategies are formulated and how social housing providers could enhance customer service delivery. The study comprised four phases in order to reflect the key objectives of the research. The first phase comprised a review of literature on social housing provision in the UK, identifying relevant changes in the legislative framework, an assessment of the challenges faced by RSLs and the key factors influencing performance of social housing provision. This phase also included undertaking a case study based on five different RSLs to examine the ‘real problems’ as to how and to what extent RSLs have adopted their organisation in order to meet the changes and challenges which they now face. The second phase investigated the key service factors impacting on housing maintenance strategy design and development through the use of a pilot study questionnaire directed to the asset managers (participating in the survey) and also included a selection of end users of the services (tenants). This phase identified the differences between the perceptions of service providers and the expectations of the service users. A key feature of this phase entailed conducting a workshop to disseminate findings of the pilot study. The workshop also formed a basis for ‘in-depth’ discussions for identifying the key factors, their descriptions, their interactions with each other, their inter-relationships with the tenant type, and their combined impact on formulating responsive housing maintenance strategy. The third phase of the study entailed eliciting qualitative data from the participants using the Repertory Grid (RG) ‘in-depth’ interview technique - a psychology tool in order to gain a deeper understanding of the core important ‘constructs’ and sub-constructs, their characteristics, their inter-relationships in the design and development of effective housing asset maintenance strategies. The fourth phase of this study entailed the development of a decision support system and the qualitative validation of the relationships found to exist between the constructs examined in phase three together with the testing of the model over a period of two months with four of the participating social housing providers. Findings The key findings arising from this research suggest that the design and development of value for money maintenance strategies within the public housing sector, are not solely based on physical factors related to the age, condition, location, construction type for example, but rather it was found that the majority of the asset management decisions made, were dependent upon a multivariate of key factors. The study identified 52 key factors, which when grouped together formed seven key cluster (Customer risk factors, Asset manager risk factors, Tenancy risk factors, Neighbourhood and community sustainability risk factors, Financial and economic risk factors, continuous service improvement risk factors and corporate risk factors) which are both ‘unique’ and ‘novel’ and are identified as having a direct influence on the formulation of housing maintenance strategy. These factors should not be considered in isolation and are more akin to the business success factors. The business ‘Balanced Scorecard’ (BSC) was evaluated and used as the basis for a ‘best fit’ model which was tested against four RSL to confirm its validity and its appropriateness. The responses obtained from these trials has indicated that the BSC provides a working tool capable of enhancing RSL organisational capabilities and service delivery effectiveness but also able to incorporate customer views regarding service delivery. This research makes major contributions to the existing limited pool of knowledge relating to strategic asset management within social housing sector and in addition, provides an insight into how housing maintenance strategy can be developed to incorporate feedback from customers (tenants) regarding the quality and responsive service delivery. The research also demonstrates the potential value of the BSC approach to the management tool capable of generating a competitive edge in line with government policy which is currently directed towards encouraging RSLs to adopt a commercial business approach to their operations. The research also demonstrates that the adoption of a decision support system in the form of BSC has the potential to provide useful assistance to RSLs intending to move away from the traditional public sector approaches to management (a more private sector orientated) approach to their operations. The research also shows that asset managers experience little difficulty in understanding the principles behind the BSC approach and its application. In addition, the cascading effect of BSC in housing maintenance strategy means that the strategy can be converted into measurable actions at the operational levels thereby providing a direct link between strategy and its implementation. Due to the absence of suitable benchmarking data, score rating derived from the RG were adopted by asset managers. This approach was found to be highly sensitive in assessing service delivery constructs.

Drought monitoring and drought planning are complex endeavors. Measures of precipitation or streamflow provide little context for understanding how social and environmental systems impacted by drought are responding. Here the authors report on collaborative work with the Hopi Tribe-a Native American community in the U.S. Southwest-to develop a drought information system that is responsive to local needs. A strategy is presented for developing a system that is based on an assessment of how drought is experienced by Hopi citizens and resource managers, that can incorporate local observations of drought impacts as well as conventional indicators, and that brings together local expertise with conventional science-based observations. The system described here is meant to harness as much available information as possible to inform tribal resource managers, political leaders, and citizens about drought conditions and to also engage these local drought stakeholders in observing, thinking about, and helping to guide planning for drought.

This study was undertaken to determine the differences and relationships between current and ideal advisory councils of the Cooperative Extension Service in Alaska, as perceived by council members and Extension agents. Responses to a written questionnaire were compared to determine differences in perceptions between the groups, with conclusions generalized only to the population of council members and agents in Alaska. Data were gathered and analyzed on both current and ideal advisory councils in three areas; roles of councils, operational procedures affecting councils, and attitudes of members and agents. These areas were divided into a total of 12 categories based upon information from a review of the literature. Council members and agents differed in their view of current councils, however, both agreed that orientation and training of councils was limited, as were resources allocated for council use. Members revealed a need for clarification of roles and authority of current councils. Agents indicated a division of opinion in attitudes about current Extension advisory councils, with less than half of agents having positive attitudes. Advisory council members and agents perceived ideal councils encompassing all categories covered in the study. Attitudes about ideal councils were positive with both groups. When matched against a model council drawn from the literature, current Alaska Extension advisory councils fell short. Alaska CES councils were seen as functioning, but not as closely to the ideal as perceived by members and agents, or as suggested in the literature. An improvement in council/staff shared decision making in all roles and operational procedures identified in the study would lead to more positive attitudes and to increased involvement in program planning by advisory councils.
Ed. D.

Thesis (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Public and private transport system planning and operation have tended to be fragmented functions. In particular, public transport is often planned and operated independently of the "private" transport system. South African government policy now requires that comprehensive, strategic transport plans be prepared by metropolitan transport authorities. These plans are expected to conform to national strategic objectives as well as including local current and longterm objectives. This planning is required in the environment of a multi-modal, multi-operator, public-private partnership scenario that is new for most of the role players. The lack of experience is accompanied by a lack of any existing model for dealing with this scenario. This dissertation describes such a model. The model is based on the principles of strategic logistics management commonly employed in commerce and industry, including service-oriented industries. The modelling process is thus based on achieving a combination of customer service and long-term objectives. The model comprises a number of separate components and steps: • A transport network model (Emme/2). ~ A multi-class, generalised-cost assignment of private and public transport demand onto a network, modified to be modeless to the public transport users, is performed. This assignment allows for the imposition of generalised-cost reflecting urban-planning objectives in addition to more conventional costs such as travel cost. In this assignment, the interaction of public and private transport is accounted for and results in an associated modal choice. ~ A series of single-class generalised-cost assignments is then used to "focus" public transport demand to create corridors of demand adequate to justify public transport routes. This process can be enhanced to develop a design promoting switching from private to public transport. It also allows for multi-period route design. ~ The results of this modelling process are output to a text file and then subject to the processes described below. The results of these processes are then input into the network model where a standard transit assignment is performed and used to modify the proposed lines and update the network design data with respect to boardings and alightings at nodes. This information is used to design fixed infrastructure. • A Microsoft Access database and route extraction program. );> The network model data is drawn into the database where it is subject to a route extraction program that converts the assignment results from the network model into a set of mode specific potential public transport route definitions. These route definitions are based on paths of maximum demand. The extraction process is controlled by parameters specified by the planner, such as minimum route lengths and the demand level for various categories of service. );> After route extraction, vehicle allocation, and transit assignment, the database provides details of the boardings and alightings and number and details of transit lines using each node and link in the network. This data is used to design fixed infrastructure. • A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet vehicle operating cost model. );> For each vehicle type, the operating cost given the anticipated vehicle mileage and operating speed is determined. This is used to guide the choice of vehicles for different routes. • A Lingo goal-programming model. );> The potential routes and the available or potential fleet are subjected to a goalprogramme in which the optimum choice of vehicle allocation is determined. The allocation parameters can be controlled by the planner. These parameters may include costs, energy, fuel consumption, and vehicle and route limitations amongst others. Multiperiod design is included in the modelling process so that the optimum design may be for the operating period, daily, or weekly cycle. The modelling process provides two main outputs: • A set of fully described and costed transit lines ill terms of both routing and vehicle allocation. These transit line definitions can be output to the level of driver instructions if necessary. • Details of the type and location of infrastructure to be provided on the network.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Openbare en private vervoerstelsel-beplanning en -bedryf IS geneig om gefragmenteerde funksies te wees. Dit is veral waarneembaar in die openbare vervoerstelsels waarvan die beplanning en bedryf onafhanklik van die "private" vervoerstelsels plaasvind. Die beleid van die Suid-Afrikaanse regering vereis dat omvattende strategiese vervoerplanne deur die metropolitaanse vervoer owerhede voorberei word. Daar word van hierdie planne verwag om aan die nasionale strategiese doelwitte, asook die plaaslike bestaande en langtermyn doelwitte te voldoen. Hierdie beplanning word vereis deur 'n omgewing wat nuut is vir die meeste rolspelers en bestaan uit multi-modale, multi-operateur en openbare-private vennootskap scenario's. Die tekort aan ondervinding gaan gepaard met 'n tekort aan 'n bestaande model wat gebruik kan word om hierdie scenario's te hanteer. So 'n model word deur hierdie verhandeling beskryf. Die model is gebasseer op die beginsels van strategiese logistieke bestuur wat algemeen gebruik word in die handel en industrie, insluitende die diens-georïenteerde industrieë. Die modelleringsproses wil dus 'n kombinasie van diens aan kliënte en langtermyn doelwitte bereik. Die model bestaan uit onderskeie komponente en stappe: • 'n Vervoernetwerkmodel (Emmel2) }i;> 'n Multi-klas, veralgemeende-koste toedeling van private en openbare vervoeraanvraag op 'n netwerk, aangepas om modusloos te wees vir die openbare vervoergebruiker, word uitgevoer. Hierdie toedeling laat nie net die heffing van meer konvensionele kostes, soos reiskoste toe nie, maar ook veralgemeende kostes wat staatsbeplarmingsdoelwitte reflekteer. In hierdie opdrag word die interaksie van openbare- en private vervoer ondersoek waarvan die uiteinde 'n geassosieerde modale keuse is. }i;> 'n Reeks enkelklas veralgemeende koste toedelings word dan gebruik om op openbare vervoeraanvraag te fokus en daardeur korridors van aanvraag, wat gepas is om openbare vervoerroetes te regverdig, te skep. Hierdie proses kan verfyn word om 'n plan te ontwikkel wat die verskuiwing van private vervoer na openbare vervoer sal bevorder. Dit laat ook die ontwerp van multi-periode roetes toe. }i;> Die resultate van hierdie modelleringsproses word uitgevoer na 'n tekslêer en dan aan die prosesse, wat hier onder beskryf word, onderwerp. Die resultate van hierdie prosesse word dan ingevoer in die netwerkmodel waar 'n standaard publieke vervoertoedeling uitgevoer word. Dit word dan gebruik om die voorgestelde roetes te wysig en die netwerk data, met betrekking tot die aantal persone wat op en af klim by nodes, op te dateer. Hierdie inligting word gebruik vir die ontwerp van infrastrukture. • 'n Microsoft Access databasis en roete-ontrekkingsprogram );> Die netwerkmodel data word in die databasis ingetrek waar dit aan 'n roeteontrekkingsprogram onderwerp word. Hierdie program skakel die toedelingsresultate van die netwerkmodel om na 'n stel potensiële modus spesifieke openbare vervoerroete definisies. Hierdie roete definisies word gebasseer op paaie van maksimum aanvraag. Die ontrekkingsproses word deur parameters, soos minimum lengte van roetes en die vlak van aanvraag van verskeie kategorieë van diens, wat deur die beplanner gespesifiseer word, gekontroleer. );> Na die ontrekking van roetes, voertuigtoekenning en vervoertoedeling, voorsien die databasis besonderhede van die aantal persone wat op en af klim asook die aantal en details van vervoerroete wat elke node en skakel in die netwerk gebruik. Hierdie data word gebruik om infrastrukture te ontwerp. • 'n Microsoft Excel sigblad voertuig bedryfskoste model )i> Vir elke tipe voertuig word die bedryfskoste, volgens die verwagte afstand en spoed van die spesifieke voertuig, bepaal. Die resultate word gebruik om die keuse van voertuie vir verskillende roetes te bepaal. • 'n Lingo doelprogrameringsmodel );> Die potensiële roetes en die beskikbare of potensiële vloot word onderwerp aan 'n doelprogram waarin die optimum keuse van voertuigtoekenning bepaal word. Die toekenningsparameters kan deur die beplanner gekontroleer word. Die parameters kan onder andere kostes, energie, brandstofverbruik en voertuig- en roete beperkings, insluit. Multi-periode ontwerp is ingesluit in die modelleringsproses sodat die optimum ontwerp vir die bedryfsperiode, daaglikse of weeklikse siklusse, kan wees. Die modelleringsproses lewer twee hoofuitkomste: • 'n Stel volledig beskrywende en koste berekende vervoerroete wat, indien nodig, na die vlak van bestuurder instruksies, uitgevoer kan word. • Details van die tipe en plek van infrastruktuur wat benodig word deur die netwerk.

This thesis presents a new approach to local decision-making in multi-agent systems with varying amounts of communication. Here, local decision-making refers to action choices which are made in a decentralized fashion by individual agents based on the information which is locally available to them. The work described here is set within the multi-agent decision process framework. Unreliable, faulty or stochastic communication patterns present a challenge to these settings which usually rely on precomputed, centralised solutions to control individual action choices. Various approximate algorithms for local decision-making are developed for scenarios with and without sequentiality. The construction of these techniques is based strongly on methods of Bayesian inference. Their performance is tested on synthetic benchmark scenarios and compared to that of a more conservative approach which guarantees coordinated action choices as well as a completely decentralized solution. In addition, the method is applied to a surveillance task based on real-world data. These simulation results show that the algorithms presented here can outperform more traditional approaches in many settings and provide a means for flexible, scalable decision-making in systems with varying information exchange between agents.

Thesis (MPhil (Information Science))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Municipalities in South Africa, especially rural ones, have been struggling to deliver services to communities to the extent that government placed those worse-off under Project Consolidate. The implementation of Project Consolidate indicate that the capability of municipalities to deliver services to their communities faced several challenges. Most challenges are attributed to skills, processes, procedures and resources. During the dawn of democracy municipalities were merged into manageable demarcated areas for efficiency, effectiveness and inclusive governance to improve service delivery. The study primarily looks into whether DSS are implemented in Letsemeng Local Municipality and what the benefits are for service delivery to the community. The study was conducted in Letsemeng Local Municipality because it is representative of rural municipalities facing similar changes. It focuses on the administrative and political capability to transform Letsemeng Local Municipality into an effective service delivery vehicle. Administrative capability primarily concentrates on the ability of procedure, systems and management skills to manage a transformed municipal institution within the new democratic dispensation, while political capability concentrates on the role of politicians (councillors) on support and facilitation to meet the needs of the community. Taking these factors into consideration the role of DSS and IKM in successful service delivery was investigated through interviewing key managers (municipal, financial, technical and corporate managers) and analysing support documentation used by the municipality. It was discovered that the performance of Letsemeng Local Municipality is affected by the lack of DSS to support management and politicians, absence of appropriate IKM application for continuous service improvement, high turnover of staff leaving mostly unskilled and less experienced and to a lesser extent political interference. It was also concluded that the implementation of DSS and IKM cannot on its own improve service delivery, but improvement might be achieved if accompanied by Letsemeng Local Municipality BPR (Business Process Re-engineering).
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Munisipaliteite in Suid-Afrika, veral dié in landelike gebiede, sukkel dermate om dienste aan gemeenskappe te lewer dat die regering dié wat die slegste gevaar het, moes plaas onder Projek Konsolideer. Die implementering van Projek Konsolideer is ‘n aanduiding dat munisipaliteite se vermoë om dienste te lewer voor verskillende uitdagings te staan kom. Die meeste van die uitdagings word toegeskryf aan vaardighede, prosesse en hulpbronne. Met die aanbreek van demokrasie is munisipaliteite saamgesmelt in beheerbare afgebakende gebiede met die oog op doeltreffendheid, doelmatigheid en inklusiewe bestuur wat gemik is op verbeterde dienslewering. Hierdie studie ondersoek primêr of beslissingsteunstelsels (DSS) geïmplementeer word by die Letsemeng Plaaslike Munisipaliteit en watter voordele dit vir die gemeenskap inhou insoverre dit dienslewering betref. Die studie is in Letsemeng onderneem aangesien hierdie munisipaliteit verteenwoordigend is van munisipaliteite met soortgelyke uitdagings. Dit fokus op die administratiewe en politieke vermoë om die Letsemeng Plaaslike Munisipaliteit te omvorm in ‘n effektiewe instrument vir dienslewering. Administratiewe vermoë konsentreer primêr op die vermoë van prosedures, stelsels en bestuursvaardighede om ‘n getransformeerde munisipale instelling binne die nuwe demokratiese bestel te bestuur, terwyl politieke vermoë gerig is op die rol van politici (raadslede), ondersteuning en fasilitering om in die behoeftes van die gemeenskap te voldoen. Met inagneming van hierdie faktore is die rol van DSS en IKM (Inligting- en Kennisbestuur) in suksesvolle dienslewering ondersoek deur onderhoude te voer met sleutelbestuurders (munisipale-, finansiële-, tegniese- en bedryfsbestuurders) en deur ondersteunende dokumentasie wat deur die munisipaliteit gebruik word, na te gaan. Daar is bevind dat Letsemeng Plaaslike Munisipaliteit se werksverrigting geraak word deur ‘n gebrek aan DSS ter ondersteuning van bestuurslui en politici, die afwesigheid van toepaslike IKMaanwending vir voortgesette verbetering in dienslewering, hoë personeelomset as gevolg van werknemers wat bedank en minder geskoolde en minder ervare werknemers agterlaat en, in ‘n mindere mate, inmenging deur politici. Daar is ook vasgestel dat die implementering van DSS en IKM nie op sigself dienslewering sal verbeter nie, maar dit kan verbetering meebring indien dit saamval met die Letsemeng Plaaslike Munisipaliteit se BPR (Herbouing van die Bedryfsproses).

Planning is what sustains an energy system. It is a process of analysis and ongoing decision making about what resources and energy technologies to use when supplying energy to society. This research focuses on integrated energy systems, i.e. systems that are comprised of several energy carriers – electricity, gas, hot water - and energy distribution networks. The planning of these kinds of systems is a complex process, influenced by many factors, among which the most important are the availability of energy resources and the competition between different energy carriers in satisfying energy demand. During the last 10-20 years significant changes have taken place on the world energy scene, which have important implications for energy planning. Two main factors have triggered these changes. The first factor is the immediate need to address environmental changes or more generally, to take measures that are sustainable in the long run. Sustainability can be defined in many ways and in relation to different issues such as economic and ecologic development, reduction of greenhouse gases, responsible use of natural resources, social equity, etc. In recent years, an increased awareness of these issues has been observed at all levels of the society. The second factor is the deregulation of national energy sectors in more than 50 countries. This process brought changes in the ownership of different parts of the formerly integrated energy systems. New business opportunities were created in power generation, wholesale power/gas trading and energy retailing, while the energy infrastructures remained state owned or/and under regulatory control. The newly created energy markets (many of them international) have attracted both new players (power, oil and gas companies and financial institutions) together with the old ones (integrated utilities). In parallel with this vertical separation of national energy sectors, recent studies have shown a tendency for horizontal integration at the regional/company level. For instance, in order to reduce their overall business risk, companies prefer to participate in several segments of the energy value chain (in both regulated and non-regulated activities), and often across more than one fuel commodity, such as gas and electricity or district heating. In this context, the competition between different energy carriers in satisfying the end-use energy demand became obvious in economic as well as in technological and environmental terms. Traditionally, in integrated planning, this competition did not play a big role, since the same state entity made decisions at both national and regional levels. However, in the post-deregulation era it is no longer obvious who the planner is. In many cases, planning decision at local levels involve at least three main interest groups: energy companies (and/or other investors), the state and the local community. This thesis is motivated by the need to help planners to cope with the changes in concepts and values concerning the planning of local energy supply systems. This thesis has two aims. The first aim is to improve the understanding of what planning of local systems implies and how such a process can be structured. The second aim is to contribute to the development of decision support methodologies and tools that can cope with the needs in planning. For this purpose, the use of energy modelling and Multi- Criteria Decision Analysis has been studied.

La perception menant à une prise de décision implique de multiples aires corticales. Il a été proposé que l'information sensorielle se propage des aires sensorielles primaires, codant principalement la nature du stimulus, aux aires de haut-niveau - plus frontales - codant d'avantage la valence du stimulus ou la décision. Pour mieux comprendre l'intégration corticale des signaux sensoriels, nous avons enregistré les réponses sensorielles évoquées (RSE) simultanément dans différentes aires corticales, tandis que des souris apprenaient une tâche de détection sensorielle. Chez les souris ayant appris la tâche, une RSE est observée dans toutes les aires enregistrées suivant la stimulation de la vibrisse, avec des latences croissantes des aires somatosensorielles primaire (vS1) et secondaire (vS2), vers le cortex moteur primaire des vibrisses (vM1), le cortex pariétal associatif (PtA), l'hippocampe dorsal (dCA1) et enfin le cortex préfrontal médian (mPFC). Nous avons constaté une réduction des RSEs lors des échecs par rapport aux essais réussis dans toutes les aires, sauf vS1. Toutefois, seule l'inactivation de vS1, vS2 ou mPFC affecte significativement la performance des souris. Pendant l'apprentissage de la tâche, une augmentation sélective de la RSE est observée dans le mPFC en corrélation avec la performance. Des enregistrements unitaires dans le mPFC démontrent la nature excitatrice de la réponse sensorielle chez les souris entrainées. Nos résultats confirment ainsi que la réponse sensorielle dans le mPFC reflète l'importance comportementale du stimulus et corrèle avec la prise de décision, tandis que la réponse des aires sensorielles reflète plutôt la nature du stimulus
Sensory perception leading to goal-directed behavior involves multiple, spatially-distributed cortical areas. It has been hypothesized that sensory information flows from primary sensory areas encoding mainly the nature of the stimulus, to higher-order, more frontal, areas encoding the valence of the stimulus or the decision. To further understand the cortical integration of sensory signals, we recorded sensory evoked potentials (SEPs) simultaneously from different areas while mice learned a whisker-based sensory detection task. In mice that have learned the task, the whisker stimulus evoked SEP in all recorded areas with latencies increasing from the whisker primary (wS1) to the secondary somatosensory area (wS2), the whisker motor area (wM1), the parietal area (PtA), the dorsal hippocampus (dCA1) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). We found a reduction of SEPs during Miss trials compared with Hit trials in all areas except wS1. However, only the local inactivation of either wS1, wS2 or mPFC significantly impaired the mice performance. During training to the detection task, we observed a selective increase of the SEPs in mPFC that correlated with performance. Finally, using high-density extracellular recordings in mPFC, we found that whisker stimulation in trained mice evoked an early increase in the firing rate of putative excitatory neurons (regular spiking units) that was positively correlated with behavioral outcome. Our results support the idea that mPFC could signal the relevance of a sensory stimulus in the context of a well-defined behavior, whereas sensory areas would be more constrained by the nature of the stimulus

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A escolha do modal de transporte por parte das cadeias produtivas agrÃcolas à essencial para promover rapidez, melhorar a competitividade e a qualidade dos produtos ofertados. Nesse sentido, os meios de transporte exercem um papel estratÃgico no comÃrcio e nas operaÃÃes das cadeias produtivas. No caso do modal aÃreo, a atividade contribui como suporte ao desenvolvimento, uma vez que ele proporciona ganhos de velocidade, confiabilidade e seguranÃa para mercados que buscam vantagens competitivas. Este modal deve ser entendido como um sistema, que possui diversos elementos interagindo no atendimento Ãs economias globais. Para que as economias regionais disponham do modal aÃreo, faz-se necessÃrio conhecer a demanda local por transportes, requisito indispensÃvel ao planejamento do setor aÃreo, na medida em que sÃo identificadas as necessidades para o transporte de passageiros e cargas, ajudando a estabelecer prioridades no atendimento da demanda e na elaboraÃÃo de polÃticas de agregaÃÃo de valor à oferta do transporte. O objetivo deste trabalho à fornecer subsÃdios à tomada de decisÃo no planejamento e operaÃÃo de aeroportos regionais enquanto portas de escoamento da produÃÃo regional. Abordou-se como estudo de caso o aeroporto turÃstico de Aracati, no Estado do CearÃ. O estudo envolveu uma anÃlise sistÃmica do aeroporto e baseou-se nas preferÃncias e necessidades de potenciais usuÃrios. Foram aplicados questionÃrios estruturados junto Ãs autoridades responsÃveis pela gestÃo do Aeroporto de Aracati, de associaÃÃes de produtores agrÃcolas e outras pessoas responsÃveis pelos ÃrgÃos competentes estaduais. Utilizou-se a tÃcnica AHP junto aos produtores organizados em associaÃÃes, cooperativas e sindicatos da regiÃo de Aracati, Fortim e Beberibe para obter as preferÃncias dos usuÃrios no que se refere a cinco fatores: Custos, Acessibilidade, SeguranÃa, Tempo de chegada ao cliente e Infraestrutura de apoio ao embarque. A partir da anÃlise dos questionÃrios, foi elaborado um Plano de AÃÃo visando contribuir para a tomada de decisÃo no que tange à adequaÃÃo do aeroporto para transportar produtos regionais. Finalmente, deve-se ressaltar que, o aeroporto tem estrutura fÃsica suficiente para implantaÃÃo de um terminal de cargas, mas tal investimento sà deve ser feito a partir de um estudo mais aprofundado, que justifique a viabilidade do Terminal. Sugere-se que tal estudo congregue esforÃos conjuntos dos produtores, das entidades de apoio, dos agentes da cadeia produtiva (fornecedores, clientes e atravessadores), das empresas que atuarÃo no aeroporto (companhias aÃreas e transportadoras) e do poder pÃblico.
Choice of transport mode by actors of any supply chain in Agriculture sector is a very important decision to provide speed as well as to increase competitivity and quality of its products. It is known that a way a product is transported plays a strategic role in commerce and in the operations of productive chains. Air transport mode has been supporting regional development as it increases speed, reliability and safety to markets which aim competitive advantages. This transport mode must be understood as a system composed of several interacting components while attending worldwide markets. To have transport mode available in regional space it is firstly necessary knowing local transport demands through an effective planning of regional air transport sector. This is crucial because one needs to know the necessities of both passenger and cargo transport to set up priorities in attending demands as well as in put forward policies which aggregate value to transport activity. The present study aims to help decision making in planning and operating regional airports in their roles as regional production flowing portal. A case study was considered involving the airport of Aracati, county located in State of CearÃ, in the northeastern Brazil. System Analysis concepts and the Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) tecnique were employed to search for operating problems in attending demand and to elicit necessities and preferences of potential airport customers. Structured questionnaires were applied to people in charge in Aracati Airport management and other public authorities as well as in agricultural cooperatives in the study region. So, it was possible to anticipate problems and to elicit from airport potential customers their preferences concerning five points: costs, accessibility, safety, cycle time and available land infrastructure. Consequently, an Action Plan was devised to contribute to decision making both in public and private sectors trying to reinforce the airport role in supporting import/export regional activities. Finally, it is important to mention that the Aracati Airport has enough area to build a Cargo Terminal but the necessary investments need a feasibility study and actions involving conjoint efforts of regional producers and their associations, entrepreneurs who will be operating in the airport, suppliers of the regional productive chain and public authorities.

The application of a modified Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to determine the factors affecting the use of Decision Support Systems (DSS) in strategic decisionmaking in local authorities in both the UK and Egypt was the main core of this research. Although the use of DSS has become widespread in recent years for operational control its use in strategic decision-making has only rarely been seen. This research explores the problems which cause decision-makers not to use DSS effectively in making strategic decisions. Both the UK and Egypt have long histories of implementing IT in general and DSS in particular in local government. Although the UK has longer experience in adopting IT, both countries have failed to achieve the goals from this technology in a strategic context; however its operational use is quite good. The results of this research showed that the percentage of DSS usage in both the UK and Egypt were 40% and 30% respectively which means more than half of the investments in this kind of technology have not yet been used properly. This research has examined the strategic use of DSS and defined the most severe problems that could face decision makers when they use DSS strategically. To define the factors that affect DSS usage in making strategic decisions the researcher used the TAM which was first introduced in 1986 by F. Davis. This model enjoys a rich base of academic acceptance. Many subsequent studies have proven reliability of the measures and validity of the constructs and overall model. This study argues that TAM could be applicable to the context of the strategic use of DSS in local government in developing countries as it is successfully applied in developed countries in different kinds of technologies. This dissertation outlines a framework for the different factors that affect the strategic use of DSS in both the UK and Egypt. Also this research tries to find answers to the following questions: 1. What are the problems related to DSS usage in making strategic decisions? 2. What is the relative severity of these problems in both the UK and Egypt? 3. What are the differences between the UK and Egypt relating to the problems that decision-makers encounter? The hypotheses of this research were tested using a questionnaire as the main datagathering instrument in addition to interviews made mainly to validate and support the results of the quantitative approach. Rigorous validation procedures and statistical analysis methods were performed on the data, including face and content validity, alpha Chronbach and Factor analysis. The questionnaire was tested for reliability and validity and proved to be highly valid and reliable. The results of the analysis supported all hypothesised relationships. The results of this research showed that Perceived Usefulness (PU) made a significant direct effect on DSS usage in the UK group while Perceived Ease of Use (PEU) showed no significant effect in both countries in all variables apart from the internal support which was significant in the UK group. Also the results of this research showed that there was some similarity in both countries regarding the problems of strategic use of DSS, which were: absence of training for decision-makers to use DSS and failure to commit the required resources. These results indicate that if DSS is to be effectively used strategically by decision makers, local government in both developed and developing countries needs to apply greater funds to training, to making top-level decision makers comfortable with the use of DSS in hybrid (quantitative/qualitative) problem contexts and to providing those decision makers with DSS which target mainly strategic problems.

Background and Motivation

Unlike what is common in Europe and the rest of the world, Norway has traditionally met most of its stationary energy demand (including heating) with electricity, because of abundant access to hydropower. However, after the deregulation of the Norwegian electricity market in the 1990s, the increase in the electricity generation capacity has been less than the load demand increase. This is due to the relatively low electricity prices during the period, together with the fact that Norway’s energy companies no longer have any obligations to meet the load growth. The country’s generation capacity is currently not sufficient to meet demand, and accordingly, Norway is now a net importer of electricity, even in normal hydrological years. The situation has led to an increased focus on alternative energy solutions.

It has been common that different energy infrastructures – such as electricity, district heating and natural gas networks – have been planned and commissioned by independent companies. However, such an organization of the planning means that synergistic effects of a combined energy system to a large extent are neglected. During the last decades, several traditional electricity companies have started to offer alternative energy carriers to their customers. This has led to a need for a more comprehensive and sophisticated energy-planning process, where the various energy infrastructures are planned in a coordinated way. The use of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) appears to be suited for coordinated planning of energy systems with multiple energy carriers. MCDA is a generic term for different methods that help people make decisions according to their preferences in situations characterized by multiple conflicting criteria.

The thesis focuses on two important stages of a multi-criteria planning task:

- The initial structuring and modelling phase

- The decision-making phase

The Initial Structuring and Modelling Phase

It is important to spend sufficient time and resources on the problem definition and structuring, so that all disagreements among the decision-maker(s) (DM(s)) and the analyst regarding the nature of the problem and the desired goals are eliminated. After the problem has been properly identified, the next step of a multi-criteria energy-planning process is the building of an energy system model (impact model). The model is used to calculate the operational attributes necessary for the multi-criteria analysis; in other words, to determine the various alternatives’ performance values for some or all of the criteria being considered. It is important that the model accounts for both the physical characteristics of the energy system components and the complex relationships between the system parameters. However, it is not propitious to choose/build an energy system model with a greater level of detail than needed to achieve the aims of the planning project.

In my PhD research, I have chosen to use the eTransport model as the energy system model. This model is especially designed for planning of local and regional energy systems, where different energy carriers and technologies are considered simultaneously. However, eTransport can currently provide information only about costs and emissions directly connected to the energy system’s operation. Details about the investment plans’ performance on the remaining criteria must be found from other information sources. Guidelines should be identified regarding the extent to which different aspects should be accounted for, and on the ways these impacts can be assessed for each investment plan under consideration. However, it is important to realize that there is not one solution for how to do this that is valid for all kind of local energy-planning problems. It is therefore necessary for the DM(s) and the analyst to discuss these issues before entering the decision-making phase.

The Decision-Making Phase

Two case studies have been undertaken to examine to what extent the use of MCDA is suitable for local energy-planning purposes. In the two case studies, two of the most well-known MCDA methods, the Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), have been tested. Other MCDA methods, such as GP or the outranking methods, could also have been applied. However, I chose to focus on value measurement methods as AHP and MAUT, and have not tested other methods. Accordingly, my research cannot determine if value measurement methods are better suited for energy-planning purposes than GP or outranking methods are.

Although all MCDA methods are constructed to help DMs explore their ‘true values’ – which theoretically should be the same regardless of the method used to elicit them – our experiments showed that different MCDA methods do not necessarily provide the same results. Some of the differences are caused by the two methods’ different ways of asking questions, as well as the DMs’ inability to express clearly their value judgements by using one or both the methods. In particular, the MAUT preference-elicitation procedure was difficult to understand and accept for DMs without previous experience with the utility concept. An additional explanation of the differences is that the external uncertainties included in the problem formulation are better accounted for in MAUT than in AHP. There are also a number of essential weaknesses in the theoretical foundation of the AHP method that may have influenced the results using that method. However, the AHP method seems to be preferred by DMs, because the method is straightforward and easier to use and understand than the relatively complex MAUT method.

It was found that the post-interview process is essential for a good decision outcome. For example, the results from the preference aggregation may indicate that according to the DM’s preferences, a modification of one of the alternatives might be propitious. In such cases, it is important to realize that MCDA is an iterative process. The post-interview process also includes presentation and discussion of results with the DMs. Our experiments showed that the DMs might discover inconsistencies in the results; that the results do not reflect the DM’s actual preferences for some reason; or that the results simply do not feel right. In these cases, it is again essential to return to an earlier phase of the MCDA process and conduct a new analysis where these problems or discrepancies are taken into account.

The results from an MAUT analysis are usually presented to the DMs in the form of expected total utilities given on a scale from zero to one. Expected utilities are convenient for ranking and evaluation of alternatives. However, they do not have any direct physical meaning, which quite obviously is a disadvantage from an application point of view. In order to improve the understanding of the differences between the alternatives, the Equivalent Attribute Technique (EAT) can be applied. EAT was tested in the first of the two case studies. In this case study, the cost criterion was considered important by the DMs, and the utility differences were therefore converted to equivalent cost differences. In the second case study, the preference elicitation interviews showed, quite surprisingly, that cost was not considered among the most important criteria by the DMs, and none of the other attributes were suitable to be used as the equivalent attribute. Therefore, in this case study, the use of EAT could not help the DMs interpreting the differences between the alternatives.

Summarizing

For MCDA to be really useful for actual local energy planning, it is necessary to find/design an MCDA method which: (1) is easy to use and has a transparent logic; (2) presents results in a way easily understandable for the DM; (3) is able to elicit and aggregate the DMs' real preferences; and (4) can handle external uncertainties in a consistent way.

Thesis: S.M. in Technology and Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Engineering, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, Technology and Policy Program, 2016.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 97-98).
Current estimates indicate that an alarming 1 billion existing people still lack access to electricity around the world. Technological advancements have pushed off-grid solutions into the limelight as possible alternatives to the traditional method of electrification via extension of the centralized grid. When grid reliability is poor, the community is remote, or when the arrival of the grid is undetermined, off-grid systems may be suitable substitutes for traditional grid extension efforts. Nonetheless, severe resource constraints, the scale of planning, and the choice between electrification modes create a complicated environment under which planners in the developing world must devise electrification plans and relevant policies. This thesis demonstrates how computational tools can provide value to rural electrification planning. The Reference Electrification Model (REM) assists planners by identifying optimal regions for grid extension projects and off-grid solutions, along with technical design and associated financial metrics. In particular, this thesis focuses on the discussion of the Local Reference Electrification Model (LREM), an adaption of REM to localized electrification design. LREM is a comprehensive, decision-making tool that produces detailed generation and network designs for a singular microgrid system. It contributes to the electrification effort by providing the quantitative basis with which to explore financial, technical, and performance implications of various factors in microgrid design. In doing so, LREM improves the microgrid designs relied upon by REM in its regional planning decisions. This research emphasizes the ability for computational tools such as REM and LREM to assist in developing viable policies and regulations, as well as feasible designs and plans to accelerate electricity access globally.
by Vivian Li.
S.M. in Technology and Policy

The internationalization of production requires each multinational firm to determine the local content rate for his product that is made and sold in a foreign country. In this thesis, we investigate the local content rate and pricing decisions for a multinational firm who competes with a local firm in a market without and with a local content requirement (LCR). We develop and solve a two-stage decision problem in which the multinational firm determines his optimal local content rate and the two firms then make their pricing decisions. Our analytical results show that the multinational firm sets a lower local content rate, when the competition between the product of the multinational firm and that of the local firm intensifies, consumers' valuation is more strongly affected by the quality of the product of the multinational firm, and the reduction in consumers' marginal utility is smaller. We also show that an LCR may induce the multinational firm to increase local content rate and transfer benefits from the multinational firm to the local firm. However, a very high LCR threshold will cause the multinational firm to adopt a low local content rate, resulting in a low demand and profit for both the multinational firm and the local firm.

Ecological modelling problems have characteristics both featured in other modelling fields and specific ones, hence, methods developed and tested in other research areas may not be suitable for modelling ecological problems or may perform poorly when used on ecological data. This thesis identifies issues associated with the techniques typically used for solving ecological problems and develops new generic methods for decision support, especially suitable for ecological data modelling, which are characterised by: (1) adaptive learning, (2) knowledge discovery and (3) accurate prediction. These new methods have been successfully applied to challenging real world ecological problems. Despite the fact that the number of possible applications of computational intelligence methods in ecology is vast, this thesis primarily concentrates on two problems: (1) species establishment prediction and (2) environmental monitoring. Our review of recent papers suggests that multi-layer perceptron networks trained using the backpropagation algorithm are most widely used of all artificial neural networks for forecasting pest insect invasions. While the multi-layer perceptron networks are appropriate for modelling complex nonlinear relationships, they have rather limited exploratory capabilities and are difficult to adapt to dynamically changing data. In this thesis an approach that addresses these limitations is proposed. We found that environmental monitoring applications could benefit from having an intelligent taste recognition system possibly embedded in an autonomous robot. Hence, this thesis reviews the current knowledge on taste recognition and proposes a biologically inspired artificial model of taste recognition based on biologically plausible spiking neurons. The model is dynamic and is capable of learning new tastants as they become available. Furthermore, the model builds a knowledge base that can be extracted during or after the learning process in form of IF-THEN fuzzy rules. It also comprises a layer that simulates the influence of taste receptor cells on the activity of their adjacent cells. These features increase the biological relevance of the model compared to other current taste recognition models. The proposed model was implemented in software on a single personal computer and in hardware on an Altera FPGA chip. Both implementations were applied to two real-world taste datasets.In addition, for the first time the applicability of transductive reasoning for forecasting the establishment potential of pest insects into new locations was investigated. For this purpose four types of predictive models, built using inductive and transductive reasoning, were used for predicting the distributions of three pest insects. The models were evaluated in terms of their predictive accuracy and their ability to discover patterns in the modelling data. The results obtained indicate that evolving connectionist systems can be successfully used for building predictive distribution models and environmental monitoring systems. The features available in the proposed dynamic systems, such as on-line learning and knowledge discovery, are needed to improve our knowledge of the species distributions. This work laid down the foundation for a number of interesting future projects in the field of ecological modelling, robotics, pervasive computing and pattern recognition that can be undertaken separately or in sequence.

The Local Government: Municipal Systems Act 32 of 2000 (the Systems Act) is a legislative tool vital for municipal revenue collection, which in turn ensures that municipalities are able to deliver on their constitutional obligation to provide much needed public services. Section 118 has been a cause of much contention since the Act came into effect. Disputes between the municipality and homeowners have become a common reoccurrence, with most of the matters ending up in court proceedings. Cases such as Mkontwana, Mathabathe, Mitchell and Jordaan have shaped the interpretation and application of the Systems Act. The Jordaan case, in particular, has brought about changes with regard to new owners and issues related to property transfers. The focus of this dissertation is to detail the effect and analyse the influence of the Jordaan decision on section 118 of the Act. To effectively reflect on the changes brought about by the Jordaan case, I consider the history of the Act, the influences of other court cases as well as legislation.
Mini Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2019.
Mercantile Law
LLM
Unrestricted

Urban research is aware of being culturally embedded, and inability to break free from history in some cases may explain why the change goes in a particular direction. After more than 70 years of centrally planned community and isolation, present urban structures in Russia stand as arenas for the system transitions. The political and socio-economic changes of the last decades had an impact on urban structures and relations between the different levels of planning. The municipalities are now assumed to be independent in terms of decision-making and local priorities, urban programs and civic engagement procedures. While the degree of success in urban development varies between the different Russian cities, the paper studies the local planning functions as well neighborhood governance and puts the results into the soviet planning context. By using in-depth interviews, the data has been collected providing a knowledgebase of the subject across the study area. The results show both various gaps of transformation (e.g. insufficient legislature, lack of local initiative and federal guidance, marginalized master plan, poor neighborhood governance) and path-dependent system (normativism, unsuccessful civic engagement, lack of communication between different institutions, companies and publics). The discussion argues that at the national scale the issue lies in the uncompleted socio-cultural transformation, which creates a quasi-existent planning system at the local level.

Lung cancer has become the most lethal malignancy in the world in recent decades. And despite advances in medicine, there has been little progress regarding the cure of the disease. According to the National Cancer Institute in the last global estimate of the incidence of lung cancer in 2012, there were 1.82 million cases of cancer, with 1.24 million among men and 583 thusand among women. The main cause of lung cancer is smoking that is responsible for 90 % of diagnosed cases. The diagnosis of lung cancer is done mainly based on CT images, and today it is considered the main visualization technique for detecting pulmonary nodules. However, the process of identifying and classi cation of nodules are complex and involves subjective and qualitative factors that lead experts to error. This scenario requires the use of computational techniques to e ectively manipulate the data and provide the means for more accurate diagnoses. Computer systems have been developed in order to search and retrieve imaging exams already diagnosed which are similar to a new case with unknown pathology according to the similarity between their characteristics. This property is intrinsic to Content-Based Image Retrieval (CBIR). Diagnosed exams retrieved can be used as a second opinion to guide those specialists in the diagnosis, providing more information. However, CBIR presents some limitations regarding to the process of segmentation and representation of image characteristics through of attributes, as well as determine an appropriate similarity metric. This paper presents a local update weighing algorithm applied to the Weighted Euclidean Distance (WED) in a CBIR architecture in order to verify if the WED with adjusted weights is more accurate than the Euclidean Distance in image retrieval of pulmonary nodules. For this, the 3D Texture Attributes (3D AT) and 3D Margin Sharpness Attributes (3D MSA) were used to represent nodules. Presente process consists of two phases that are performed sequentially and cyclically being an Assessment Phase and Training Phase. At each iteration the weights are adjusted according to the retrieved nodules. At the end of cycles execution, it is obtained a set of attribute weights that optimize the recovery of similar nodes. The results achieved by updating the weights were promising and increase precision by 10% to 6% on mean for recovery of benign and malignant nodules respectively with recall 25%. In the best case, the 3D MSA provided 100% of precision for the two classes with recall 90%. This proves the e ectiveness of the algorithm achieving the goals to this work and con rms the hypothesis that the DEP, with adjusted weights, provides greater precision than DE as a similarity metric in CBIR systems.
Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Alagoas
O câncer de pulmão se tornou a neoplasia maligna mais letal do mundo nas últimas décadas. E, apesar dos avanços na medicina, houve pouco progresso com relação à cura da doença. Segundo o INCA, na última estimativa mundial sobre a incidência de câncer pulmonar, em 2012, foram registrados 1,82 milhão de casos de câncer, sendo 1,24 milhão entre os homens e 583 mil entre as mulheres. O principal causador do câncer pulmonar é o tabagismo sendo responsável por 90% dos casos diagnosticados. O diagnóstico do câncer pulmonar é feito, principalmente, com base em imagens de TC e, hoje, é considerada a principal técnica de visualização para detecção de nódulos pulmonares. Entretanto, o processo de identi cação e classi cação de nódulos é complexo e envolve fatores subjetivos e qualitativos que acabam induzindo os especialistas ao erro. Este panorama exige o emprego de técnicas computacionais que permitam efetivamente manipular os dados e proporcionar meios para diagnósticos mais precisos. Sistemas computacionais têm sido desenvolvidos com o objetivo de buscar e recuperar imagens de exames já diagnosticados, que são similares a um novo caso com patologia ainda desconhecida segundo a similaridade entre as suas características. Essa propriedade é intrínseca aos sistemas CBIR. Os exames diagnosticados recuperados podem ser utilizados como uma segunda opinião para guiar os especialistas no momento do diagnóstico, fornecendo informações adicionais. Contudo, CBIR apresenta algumas limitações referentes ao processo de extração e representação de características das imagens, por meio de atributos, e a determinação de uma métrica de similaridade adequada. Este trabalho apresenta um algoritmo de ajuste local de pesos aplicado à DEP em uma arquitetura CBIR com o objetivo de veri car se a DEP com os pesos ajustados é mais precisa do que a DE na recuperação de imagens contendo nódulos de câncer pulmonar. Para isso, foram utilizados os AT 3D e os ANB 3D para representar os nódulos. O processo apresentado é composto por duas fases que são executadas de forma sequencial e cíclica sendo uma Fase de Avaliação e uma de Fase de Treinamento. A cada iteração os pesos são ajustados segundo os nódulos recuperados. Ao término do ciclo de execuções das fases, obtém-se um conjunto de pesos de atributos que otimizam a recuperação de nódulos semelhantes. Os resultados alcançados pela atualização dos pesos foram promissores aumentando a precisão em 10% e 6% em média para recuperação de nódulos benignos e malignos, respectivamente, com revocação de 25%. No melhor caso, o ANB 3D proporcionou 100% para recuperação das duas classes com revocação de 90%. Isso comprova a e cácia do algoritmo alcançando os objetivos almejados para o trabalho e con rmando a hipótese de que a DEP com os pesos ajustados proporciona maior precisão do que DE como métrica de similaridade em sistemas CBIR.

After decades of standstill in intercity passenger rail in the United States, the Obama administration recently started major initiatives to implement high-speed ground transportation projects that are expected to improve the nation's transportation system significantly, addressing most prevailing issues like congestion and energy prices while having positive effects on the economy. This study evaluates and compares two high-speed ground transportation systems that have the potential to improve intercity passenger transportation in the United States significantly: the wheel-on-rail high-speed system and the high-speed maglev system. Both high-speed ground transportation systems were evaluated with respect to 58 characteristics organized into 7 categories associated with technology, environmental impacts, economic considerations, user-friendliness, operations, political factors, and safety. Based on the performance of each system in each of the 58 characteristics, benefit values were assigned. In order to weight the relative importance of the different characteristics, a survey was conducted with transportation departments and transportation professionals. The survey produced weighting factors scoring each of the 58 characteristics and the 7 categories. Applying a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach, the overall utility values for either system were calculated based on the benefit values from the systems comparison and the weighting factors from the survey. It was shown that the high-speed maglev system is generally slightly superior over the wheel-on-rail high-speed system. Because the magnitude of the difference in the overall performance of both transportation systems is not very big, it is recommended that every project in the high-speed intercity passenger transportation market consider both HSGT systems equally.

En s'appuyant sur les résultats (prototypes textiles souples, capteurs et algorithmes) obtenus dans les projets scientifiques développés au sein de l’équipe de recherche (IOTFetMov (ANR), E-TexWeld (H2020)), cette thèse doctorale a pour objectif de développer un nouveau vêtement intelligent et connecté, afin de réaliser en temps-réel la détection et le suivi des symptômes du patient atteint de COVID-19 Long. De façon automatique, il s’agit de poser un pré-diagnostic basique à partir du traitement de signaux pertinents par des techniques intelligentes comme un outil d’aide à la décision à destination des équipes médicales. Ce vêtement intelligent, prenant la forme d’une ceinture instrumentée en contact étroit avec le corps du patient et sachant être portée sur la durée, intègre à la fois un ensemble de capteurs mesurant des signaux temporels physiologiques (température de la peau, électrocardiogramme) et embarque un système d'aide à la décision locale permettant à la fois d’estimer les paramètres physiologiques nécessaires à une détermination automatique de la sévérité de l’infection du patient connecté par apprentissage des signaux mesurés et de la connaissance experte médicale. Un diagnostic à distance pourra dès lors s'effectuer au travers d’échanges avec le médecin par le biais du vêtement intelligent et du smartphone utilisé comme une passerelle du patient connecté. De cette manière, toute aggravation rapide des symptômes sera précocement détectée et offrira aux médecins une réactivité plus rapide pour intervenir dans les meilleurs délais et protéger la santé des patients
Based on the results (prototypes, sensors, algorithms) obtained in our previous projects (IOTFetMov (ANR), TexWeld (H2020)), this PhD thesis aims at designing a new intelligent garment, in order to detect and monitor in real time, the symptoms of long COVID-19 patient. We establish a pre-diagnosis by processing relevant signals using intelligent techniques. This intelligent garment, a close-fitting belt, integrates both a set of sensors, measuring physiological indices (skin temperatures, electrocardiogram) and embed a local decision support system allowing to estimate relevant parameters used for an automatic estimation of the connected patient health status, by learning from the measured signals and from the medical expert knowledge. A remote diagnosis can be carried out through interactions with the doctor via the e-textile and the patient's smartphone. In this way, a rapid worsening of symptoms will be detected early, and doctors will be able to react more quickly to manage patients

A presente dissertação final do Mestrado de Ciências Documentais/Arquivo versa sobre um estudo de caso, que é a implementação de um programa de gestão documental, na Câmara Municipal de Sesimbra. Pretende-se, nesta dissertação, analisar e reflectir sobre o trabalho realizado e em curso na referida autarquia e sobre a gestão integrada de informação, vulgarmente designada por SGIIA -Sistema de Gestão Integrada de Informação Autárquica, projecto iniciado nesta edilidade em 1998 e que ainda se encontra em fase de desenvolvimento. Estruturalmente, o trabalho encontra-se dividido em duas partes; na primeira, são abordados os fundamentos teóricos desta dissertação; na segunda, é apresentada a caracterização da organização em estudo, e o modelo de sistema de informação. A metodologia utilizada tem por base a Business Systems Planning e a reflexão sobre a minha experiência de trabalho. Entre outros aspectos, são abordadas temáticas como a informação, enquanto factor preponderante nas organizações, as tecnologias de informação, a utilização desta na administração pública, os sistemas de informação, a abordagem sobre o caso português, a caracterização da Câmara Municipal de Sesimbra, a sua cultura organizacional, a arquitectura de informação, e a tomada de decisão, entre outros elementos considerados importantes. A implementação do SGIIA - Sistema de Gestão Integrada de Informação Autárquica - decorre há cerca de 4 anos, não sendo previsível, como é habitual, nestes casos, definir o seu terminus, dado que depende de inúmeros factores conjunturais. /*** Abstract - The final essay for the Master’s Degree on Archival Science analyses a "case study" — the implementation of a documental management program for "Sesimbra's Town Hall". We aim to describe and analise the work already accomplished and still to be accomplished at Sesimbra's Town Hall. Including the project known as SGIIA (Integrated Management System for Information) at local town councils, a project that began in this town council in 1998, still being developed. The study is divided into two chapters, the first chapter analyses the teorical fundaments of the essay, the second chapter deals with the Town Hal! organic characteristics and the mode! chosen for the information system. The methodology used has as basis the "Business Systems Planning" and a reflection on my work experience. Among other subjects, it deals with areas such as, information as a main factor in organizations, information technologies, its use in local authorities, information systems, an approach to the Portuguese system case, the characteristics of Sesimbra's Town Hall, its cultural organic structure, information structure and taking a decision, among other important elements. The introduction of "SGIIA" — Integrated Management Systems for Information at Local Authorities, has been running for about four years, and as in many similar cases, it is not possible to predict its terminus, for it depends on many internal factors.

Актуальность данной темы обусловлена объективной необходимостью совершенствования системы информационного обеспечения поддержки принятия решений на региональном уровне для улучшения социально-экономического развития в регионе. Практическая значимость исследования заключается в том, что разработанная методика поиска замкнутых финансовых потоков может быть использована органами государственной власти в практической деятельности для совершенствования информационного обеспечения системы поддержки принятия управленческих решений для улучшения социально-экономического развития региона. Органы управления региональной экономики смогут использовать финансовые инструменты местной экономки для поддержки местных сообществ, которых смогут выявить при помощи модуля поиска замкнутых сетей, для противостояния кризисным явлениям и снижения зависимости региональной экономики от внешних факторов.
The relevance of this topic is due to the objective need to improve the system of information support for decision-making support at the regional level to improve socio-economic development in the region. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that the developed method of searching for closed financial flows can be used by public authorities in practice to improve the information support of the management decision support system to improve the socio-economic development of the region. Governments of the regional economy will be able to use financial instruments of the local economy to support local communities, which they can identify with the help of the closed network search module, to resist crisis phenomena and reduce the dependence of the regional economy on external factors.

Cette thèse présente des applications véhiculaires à différentes échelles : de la petite qui permet d'effectuer des tests réels de communication et de service ; à des plus grandes incluant plus de contraintes mais permettant des simulations sur l'ensemble du réseau. Dans ce contexte nous soulignons l'importance d'avoir et de traiter des données réelles afin de pouvoir interpréter correctement les résultats. A travers ces échelles nous proposons différents services utilisant la communication V2V et V2I. Nous ne prétendons pas prendre le contrôle du véhicule, notre but est de montrer le potentiel de la communication à travers différents services. La petite échelle se focalise sur un service à un feu de circulation permettant d'améliorer les temps de parcours et d'attente, et la consommation en CO2 et en carburant. La moyenne échelle se situant sur un rond-point, permet grâce à un algorithme décentralisé, d'améliorer ces mêmes paramètres, mais montre également qu'avec une prise de décision simple et décentralisée, le système est robuste face à la perte de paquet, à la densité, aux comportements humains ou encore aux taux d'équipement. Enfin à l'échelle d'une ville, nous montrons que grâce à des décisions prises de manière locale et décentralisée, avec seulement un accès à une information partielle dans le réseau, nous obtenons des résultats proches des solutions centralisées. La quantité de données transitant ainsi dans le réseau est considérablement diminuée. Nous testons également la réponse de ces systèmes en cas de perturbation plus ou moins importante tels que des travaux, un acte terroriste ou une catastrophe naturelle. Les modèles permettant une prise de décision locale grâce aux informations délivrées autour du véhicule montrent leur potentiel que se soit avec de la communication avec l'infrastructure V2I ou entre les véhicules V2V
In this thesis we present vehicular applications across different scales: from small scale that allows real tests of communication and services; to larger scales that include more constraints but allowing simulations on the entire network. In this context, we highlight the importance of real data and real urban topology in order to properly interpret the results of simulations. We describe different services using V2V and V2I communication. In each of them we do not pretend to take control of the vehicle, the driver is present in his vehicle, our goal is to show the potential of communication through services taking into account the difficulties outlined above. In the small scale, we focus on a service with a traffic light that improves travel times, waiting times and CO2 and fuel consumption. The medium scale is a roundabout, it allows, through a decentralized algorithm, to improve the same parameters. It also shows that with a simple and decentralized decision-making process, the system is robust to packet loss, density, human behavior or equipment rate. Finally on the scale of a city, we show that local and decentralized decisions, with only a partial access to information in the network, lead to results close to centralized solutions. The amount of data in the network is greatly reduced. We also test the response of these systems in case of significant disruption in the network such as roadworks, terrorist attack or natural disaster. Models, allowing local decision thanks to information delivered around the vehicle, show their potential whatsoever with the V2I communication or V2V

En 2011, suite à un mouvement de réformation accélérée menant à l'appropriation par les écoles d'art françaises du dispositif LMD, celles-ci rejoignent l'espace européen de l'enseignement supérieur et quittent le ''régime de singularité'' qui les distinguait du système universitaire. Cette adhésion signe l'aboutissement d'une série de mesures dont l'implémentation visait à agir sur deux dimensions constitutives (différentes mais complémentaires) de la réalité des écoles d'art : la dimension académique, dont la mise aux normes des cursus et la restructuration de l'organisation pédagogique permettaient à ces établissements de délivrer des diplômes reconnus au grade de master ; le volet administratif qui, à travers la transformation des écoles d'art en établissements publics de coopération culturelle (EPCC), amorce un processus d'autonomisation vis-à-vis des structures tutélaires locales. C'est par une double opération d'interrogation des déterminants qui sont au fondement de la ''remise à niveau'' de la condition des écoles d'art, et d'examen des outils de gouvernance rendant effectif le déploiement de l'autonomie décrétée, que cette recherche se propose de saisir les nouveaux enjeux dont les écoles d'art font l'objet
In 2011, following an accelerated reformation movement led by the network of French art schools, they joined the European area of higher education, getting out of the ''regime of singularity '', which distinguished them from the university system. This adherence note the accomplishment of a series of measures, whose implementation was intended to affect two distinct dimensions, constituting the reality of art schools: -the academic dimension, including the ''upgrading'' of curricula and restructuring the pedagogical organization, which allowed to accredit the awarded degree with a recognized diploma; -the administrative dimension, which through the transformation of municipal art schools into Public Cultural Cooperation Establishment (EPCC) aimed to start the empowerment process of local authorities. The aim of this research was to perceive the new issues regarding the art schools, one of them being the factors that stimulated the ''upgrading'' of the art schools condition. The other issue examined the governance tools that made possible and effective the deployment of autonomy decreed

Advances in medical technology have altered the need for certain types of surgery to be performed in traditional inpatient hospital settings. Less invasive surgical procedures allow a growing number of medical treatments to take place on an outpatient basis. Hospitals face growing competition from ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). The competitive threats posed by ASCs are important, given that inpatient surgery has been the cornerstone of hospital services for over a century. Additional research is needed to understand how surgical volume shifts between and within acute care general hospitals (ACGHs) and ASCs. This study investigates how medical technology within the hospital industry is changing medical services delivery. The main purposes of this study are to (1) test Clayton M. Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation in health care, and (2) examine the effects of disruptive innovation on appendectomy, cholecystectomy, and bariatric surgery (ACBS) utilization. Disruptive innovation theory contends that advanced technology combined with innovative business models—located outside of traditional product markets or delivery systems—will produce simplified, quality products and services at lower costs with broader accessibility. Consequently, new markets will emerge, and conventional industry leaders will experience a loss of market share to “non-traditional” new entrants into the marketplace. The underlying assumption of this work is that ASCs (innovative business models) have adopted laparoscopy (innovative technology) and their unification has initiated disruptive innovation within the hospital industry. The disruptive effects have spawned shifts in surgical volumes from open to laparoscopic procedures, from inpatient to ambulatory settings, and from hospitals to ASCs. The research hypothesizes that: (1) there will be larger increases in the percentage of laparoscopic ACBS performed than open ACBS procedures; (2) ambulatory ACBS will experience larger percent increases than inpatient ACBS procedures; and (3) ASCs will experience larger percent increases than ACGHs. The study tracks the utilization of open, laparoscopic, inpatient and ambulatory ACBS. The research questions that guide the inquiry are: 1. How has ACBS utilization changed over this time? 2. Do ACGHs and ASCs differ in the utilization of ACBS? 3. How do states differ in the utilization of ACBS? 4. Do study findings support disruptive innovation theory in the hospital industry? The quantitative study employs a panel design using hospital discharge data from 2004 and 2009. The unit of analysis is the facility. The sampling frame is comprised of ACGHs and ASCs in Florida and Wisconsin. The study employs exploratory and confirmatory data analysis. This work finds that disruptive innovation theory is an effective model for assessing the hospital industry. The model provides a useful framework for analyzing the interplay between ACGHs and ASCs. While study findings did not support the stated hypotheses, the impact of government interventions into the competitive marketplace supports the claims of disruptive innovation theory. Regulations that intervened in the hospital industry facilitated interactions between ASCs and ACGHs, reducing the number of ASCs performing ACBS and altering the trajectory of ACBS volume by shifting surgeries from ASCs to ACGHs.

碩士
華梵大學
工業管理學系碩士班
89
When security service guarding cash from the branch to the general office, they always facing risks of robbery. By the past experience, we can find out that the critical factor for this is because of the weak variability of routing paths that make it easy for evildoer to spy on. Security service firms nowadays still can’t solve these problems to make routing paths more variable, safe and thoughtful. As a result of this, this research provide a decision support system (DSS) for securing the routing paths of guarding service that not consider only the complexity of paths but fuzziness, and also the optimization with multiple objectives. It also proposes a fuzzy multiobjective decision model that consider differences between nodes which in different fuzzy environment. It creates available information about possible and impossible routes in the road network, and find out the optimal route to providing security firms for decision support in every mission. The DSS of this research includes two stages. The first stage is to decide usage rights of road by using random interval technique, and the second stage is to formulate the fuzzy multiobjective vehicle routing programming model under six objectives, i.e., travel distance, number of lane, number of stop, road speed, traffic congestion index, and public order. Then, this research solve this model by use of the fuzzy multiobjective mathematical algorithm and fuzzy dynamic programming to determine the optimal guarding route. Finally, the DSS will be proved by an empirical study of Taipei city with WunShan region. From the results of this research, the DSS can find the best routing path for guarding cash in each network. The difference between urban and suburban region is the former have more alternative route for choose than the later.

碩士
國立交通大學
管理科學研究所
80
The objective of this thesis is to establish a conceptual division support system for local switch deployment planning to promote the efficiency and performance of planning. 　　There are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter one describes the research motivation. Objective, and approaches adopted. chapter two discusses the general difficulties of switch deployment planning . Chapter three is about the theories that this planning support system based on. Chapter four describes the framework and data flow of the planning support system. also gives a series of demo screens to show how this system works and what scenarios the user can request. Chapter five suggests the development procedures and the trend for future study. This planning support system is such an integrated system that we would like to have it implemented as soon as possible to help planning process and meet the future challenges.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
Clinical Decision Support is one of the only aspects of health information technology that has demonstrated decreased costs and increased quality in healthcare delivery, yet it is extremely expensive and time-consuming to create, maintain, and localize. Consequently, a majority of health care systems do not utilize it, and even when it is available it is frequently incorrect. Therefore it is important to look beyond traditional guideline-based decision support to more readily available resources in order to bring this technology into widespread use. This study proposes that the wisdom of physicians within a practice is a rich, untapped knowledge source that can be harnessed for this purpose. I hypothesize and demonstrate that this wisdom is reflected by order entry data well enough to partially reconstruct the knowledge behind treatment decisions. Automated reconstruction of such knowledge is used to produce dynamic, situation-specific treatment suggestions, in a similar vein to Amazon.com shopping recommendations. This approach is appealing because: it is local (so it reflects local standards); it fits into workflow more readily than the traditional local-wisdom approach (viz. the curbside consult); and, it is free (the data are already being captured). This work develops several new machine-learning algorithms and novel applications of existing algorithms, focusing on an approach called Bayesian network structure learning. I develop: an approach to produce dynamic, rank-ordered situation-specific treatment menus from treatment data; statistical machinery to evaluate their accuracy using retrospective simulation; a novel algorithm which is an order of magnitude faster than existing algorithms; a principled approach to choosing smaller, more optimal, domain-specific subsystems; and a new method to discover temporal relationships in the data. The result is a comprehensive approach for extracting knowledge from order-entry data to produce situation-specific treatment menus, which is applied to order-entry data at Wishard Hospital in Indianapolis. Retrospective simulations find that, in a large variety of clinical situations, a short menu will contain the clinicians' desired next actions. A prospective survey additionally finds that such menus aid physicians in writing order sets (in completeness and speed). This study demonstrates that clinical knowledge can be successfully extracted from treatment data for decision support.

No
A steel hot rolling mill subjects steel slabs to high temperatures and pressures in order to form steel coils. We describe the scheduling problem for a steel hot rolling mill. We detail the operation of a commercial decision support system which provides semi-automatic schedules, comparing its operation with existing, manual planning procedures. This commercial system is currently in use in several steel mills worldwide. The system features a very detailed multiobjective model of the steel hot rolling process. This model is solved using a variety of bespoke local and Tabu search heuristics. We describe both this model and the heuristics used to solve it. The production environment is highly unstable with frequent, unforeseen events interrupting planned production. We describe how the scheduling system's models, algorithms and interfaces have been developed to handle this instability. We consider particularly the impact on existing planning and production systems and the qualitative improvements which result from the system's implementation.

碩士
淡江大學
資訊工程學系碩士班
93
By using feature keywords, we can obtain some appropriate rules from a group of labeled documents. According to this way, we can classify the documents which haven’t been labeled. In this paper, we will discuss how to choose some training datum to be a basic, to calculate all keywords’ weights, to judge the keywords’ importance by their distribution, and to solve the problems of keywords’ correlation. We will try to solve to avoid the relation of keywords efficiently and filter the noise. So, we use decision tree to solve relative problems, because it can ignore the relation from word to words in first step. Second, we use the two-phase local feature to reduce amount of noisy. In chapter 4 we can observe the results that are more efficiency than before.

碩士
國立中山大學
電機工程學系研究所
97
Recently, distributed detection has been intensively studied. The prevailing model for distributed detection (DD) is a system involving both distributed local sensors and a fusion center. In a DD system, multiple sensors work collaboratively to distinguish between two or more hypotheses, e.g., the presence or absence of a target. In this thesis, the classical DD problem is reexamined in the context of wireless sensor network applications. For minimize the error probability at the fusion center, we consider the conventional method that designs the optimal binary local sensor decision rule in a channel-aware system, i.e., it integrates the transmission channel characteristics for find the optimal binary local sensor decision threshold to minimize the error probability at the fusion center. And there have different optimal local sensor decision thresholds for different channel state information. Because of optimal multi-bit (soft) local sensor decision is more practical than optimal binary local sensor decision. Allowing for multi-bit local sensor output, we also consider another conventional method that designs the optimal multi-bit (soft) local sensor decision rule in a channel-aware system. However, to design the optimal local sensor decision rule, both of two conventional methods are easily trapped into local optimal thresholds, which are depended on the pre-selected initialization values. To overcome this difficulty, we consider several modified Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithms. Based on these modified SA algorithms and two conventional methods, we propose two novel SA algorithms for implementing the optimal local sensor decision rule. Computer simulation results show that the employments of two novel SA algorithms can avoid trapping into local optimal thresholds in both optimal binary local sensor decision problem and optimal multi-bit local sensor decision problem. And two novel SA algorithms offer superior performance with lower search points compared to conventional SA algorithm.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1993.
Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-121).

碩士
國立中正大學
電機工程研究所
87
The design and implementation of an Adaptive Decision Feedback Equalizer(ADFE) applicable to the receiver of the HIPERLAN(High Performance Radio LAN) system is investigated. computer simulations are used to design the parameters of the proposed equalizer architecture, including number of taps, step size, and the word length of input signal and coefficients of equalizer, from the standpoint of HIPERLAN physical layer performance. In addition, SPW(Signal Processing WorkSystem) is employed to verify the equalizer algorithm and architecture, and then the RTL codes are optimized and transferred by VA(Visual Architect) for the gate level circuit implementation of equalizer from a hardware standpoint.

碩士
實踐大學
企業創新與創業管理研究所
99
The primary objective of this study is to build a Start-Up Decision Making System on the basis of potential factors to discuss how the interactive influence between potential factors affects when a local commercial trading company evaluating products. Back to information asymmetry period, manufacturers and suppliers strongly relied on the service which commercial trading companies provided because of lacking of market information and marketing plans as well as unfamiliar with professional trading procedures. However, the value of commercial trading companies decreased not only because of the trading information becomes more transparent and easier to acquired with the technology improving rapidly but also the increase of manufacturer’s capability. It is a tough challenge for local commercial trading companies to face and deal with changes of external environment by providing valuable products or services to its customers in order to spread risks and pursue a sustainable business. Therefore, this research is done by case study with single case, collecting and obtaining implicit data and knowledge from case company by means of in-depth interviews. The Start-Up Decision Making System is built, after related references and theses are collected, summarized and analyzed, for the case company to evaluate and make its limited resources for the best assignments.

Приходченко О. В. Забезпечення прийняття ефективних рішень у системі місцевого самоврядування : кваліфікаційна робота магістра спеціальності 281 "Публічне управління та адміністрування" / наук. керівник О. В. Краснокутський. Запоріжжя : ЗНУ, 2020. 103 с.
UA : Метою дослідження є вивчення особливостей забезпечення прийняття ефективних рішень в системі місцевого самоврядування. Об’єктом дослідження є система місцевого самоврядування. Предмет дослідження – процеси забезпечення прийняття ефективних рішень в системі місцевого самоврядування. Методи дослідження: аналізу, синтезу, узагальнення, аналізу документів. Наукова новизна дослідження полягає у тому, що у роботі пропонується розроблена система інформаційно-аналітичного та організаційного забезпечення прийняття ефективних рішень в системі місцевого самоврядування. Гіпотеза: для ефективного прийняття управлінського рішення в системі місцевого самоврядування необхідно створити систему інформаційно-аналітичного та організаційного забезпечення діяльності органу місцевого самоврядування, яка б консолідувала у своїй роботі усі етапи, причини, умови, наслідки тощо прийняття ефективних рішень. Висновки: 1. Процес забезпечення прийняття ефективних рішень складається з інформаційно-аналітичної та організаційної складових. Інформаційно-аналітична складова включає інформацію, аналітику, інформаційну та аналітичну діяльності, інформаційно-аналітичну діяльність, інформаційне та аналітичне забезпечення, а організаційно-управлінська складова забезпечення представлена системою документообігу, метою якої є доведення рішення до підлеглих та контроль його виконання. 2. Інформаційно-аналітичне та організаційне забезпечення прийняття управських рішень в системі місцевого самоврядування має ґрунтуватися на визначеній системі, що включає: функції, мету, завдання, принципи, процедури, суб’єктів та об’єкти управління.
EN : Research purpose is to study the features of ensuring effective decision making in the local government system. Research object is the local government system. Research subject is the processes of ensuring effective decision making in the local government system. Research methods are analysis, synthesis, generalization, document analysis. Research novelty is that a developed system of information-analytical and organizational support for effective decision making in the local government system is presented. Research hypothesis is that it is necessary to create a system of information-analytical and organizational support of local self-government body for effective management decision making in the local government system, which would consolidate in its work all stages, causes, conditions, consequences of an effective decision making. Conclusions: 1. The process of ensuring effective decision making consists of information-analytical and organizational components. The information-analytical component includes information, analytics, information and analytical activities, information-analytical activity, information and analytical support, and the organizational-managerial component is represented by a document management system, the purpose of which is to bring decision to subordinates and control its implementation. 2. Information-analytical and organizational support of managerial decision making in the local government system should be based on a certain system, which includes: functions, purpose, tasks, principles, procedures, subjects and objects of management.

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia e Gestão de Sistemas de Informação
As organizações estão perante um ambiente em constante mudança exigindo reestruturação das estratégias adotadas pelas organizações e uma capacidade contínua de inovação e adaptação para dar resposta a cada vez mais desafios. As organizações públicas não são exceção. Os sistemas de Business Intelligence (BI) com as suas diferentes perspetivas de análise sobre os dados da organização tornam-se preciosos para ajudar a compreender melhor o seu negócio e auxiliar os gestores nas decisões a tomar. Porém, o ciclo económico recessivo que atravessamos pode comprometer o investimento das organizações em soluções de BI, pois normalmente recorrem a soluções proprietárias que são dispendiosas. Assim, importa procurar outras alternativas, nomeadamente soluções open source. Neste trabalho pretende-se desenvolver um protótipo de um sistema de BI para a administração pública local recorrendo a tecnologia open source ou software livre. Avaliar até que ponto se consegue lançar as bases para um sistema de BI, de baixo custo, fiável e capaz de satisfazer as necessidades de uma organização pública local é o objetivo deste trabalho. O resultado esperado é lançar as bases para um sistema de BI de baixo custo, de fácil utilização e capaz de apresentar informação precisa, relevante e atual, pretendendo-se munir a organização com soluções para melhor compreender o seu negócio e ajudar no processo de tomada de decisão.
Organizations are facing very quick environment changes which require restructuring the strategies and a continuous ability to innovation and adaption to meet new challenges. Public organizations are no exception. Business Intelligence (BI) systems with different data analysis perspectives become an important tool to better understand the business and assist managers to make decisions. However, with the current economic crisis, organizational investments in BI may be compromised because these investments usually based on commercial tools are very costly. It is therefore important to look for other alternatives, including open source solutions. The aim of this work is developing a BI prototype using open source or free software and assessing the foundations for a low cost solution, reliable and able to meet the needs of one local public organization. This solution need to be easy to use and able to provide accurate, relevant and current information. Organizations with these systems can better understand their business and can improve the process of decision making based on low cost solutions.

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia e Gestão de Sistemas de Informação
Atualmente, a gestão da Administração Pública é de uma complexidade elevada. Desde a diversificação de processos interagidos com os cidadãos, com as empresas e com outras entidades da Administração Pública, até à própria gestão interna dos organismos. A utilização de sistemas de Business Intelligence pelos organismos do Governo Português, para lidar com a complexidade de gestão, tem crescido significativamente. Como em qualquer outra entidade, o ambiente organizacional das Autarquias Locais está em constante modificação, o que leva a que estas tenham que ser ágeis e tomem decisões complexas de forma menos intuitiva, mais fundamentada na informação e no momento. Desta forma, os sistemas de Business Intelligence poderão ter um papel fundamental nas Autarquias Locais. Na presente dissertação é dada ênfase ao desenvolvimento de um sistema de Business Intelligence para suporte à Gestão Orçamental de uma Autarquia Local e ao estado atual destas soluções. Neste âmbito, foi realizada a revisão de literatura dos vários conceitos e tecnologias necessárias para o seu desenvolvimento. Abordaram-se os conceitos transversais ao Business Intelligence, à Gestão Orçamental das Autarquias Locais, às tecnologias e às implementações destas soluções nas referidas entidades públicas. Com base nos resultados obtidos da revisão de literatura e das necessidades da Autarquia Local designada, Câmara Municipal de Braga, foi desenvolvido um sistema de Business Intelligence segundo a metodologia Kimball, para ajudar a simplificar e orientar todo o processo de construção. Os resultados obtidos na dissertação consistem numa análise do contributo de soluções Business Intelligence na Gestão Orçamental das Autarquias Locais, o ponto de situação destas soluções no Governo Português, bem como os requisitos necessários para o desenvolvimento de um sistema funcional de Business Intelligence numa Autarquia Local através de uma aplicação prática.
Nowadays, the management of the Public Administration is of an extreme complexity. Since the diversification of the processes interacting with citizens, with companies and with other entities on the public administration, until its own internal management of stakeholders. In order to deal with this increasing management complexity, the use of Business Intelligence systems by the Portuguese Government has significantly grown. As in any other entity, the organizational environment of local government is constantly changing. This leads the need to be more agile and take complex decisions in a less intuitive way, basing actions on information. Thus, Business Intelligence systems may play a fundamental role in the local government. This project gives emphasis to the development of a Business Intelligence system which supports the financial management of the local government. In this context, was performed a literature review of several concepts and required technologies for its development. Therefore, this document addresses the crosscutting concepts of Business Intelligence systems, the financial management of local government, the technology and implementation of these solutions in these public entities. Considering the results from the literature review and the needs of the designated local authority, Braga’s City Council, it has been developed a Business Intelligence system according to Kimball’s methodology so as to simplify and guide all the construction process. The results of the thesis consists in an analysis of the contribution of Business Intelligence solutions in the Local Authorities Budget Management, the status of these solutions in the Portuguese government, as well as the needed requirements for the development of a functional system of Business Intelligence in a Local Authority through a practical application.