Download or read book Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Development written by Gregory E. Kersten and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-03-01 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, much work has been done in formulating and clarifying the concept of sustainable development and related theoretical and research issues. Now, the challenge has shifted to designing and stimulating processes of effective planning and decision-making, at all levels of human activity, in such a way as to achieve local and global sustainable development. Information technology can help a great deal in achieving sustainable development by providing well-designed and useful tools for decision makers. One such tool is the decision support system, or DSS. This book explores the area of DSS in the context of sustainable development. As DSS is a very new technique, especially in the developing world, this book will serve as a reference text, primarily for managers, government officials, and information professionals in developing countries. It covers the concept of sustainable development, defines DSS and how it can be used in the planning and management of sustainable development, and examines the state of the art in DSS use. Other interested readers will include students, teachers, and analysts in information sciences; DSS designers, developers, and implementors; and international development agencies.

Download or read book Handbook on the Geographies of Energy written by Barry D. Solomon and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-29 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This extensive Handbook captures a range of expertise and perspectives on the changing geographies and landscapes of energy production, distribution, and use. Combining established and emerging scholarship from across disciplines, the expert contributions provide a broad overview of research frontiers for the changing geographies of energy worldwide. Interdisciplinary in nature and broad in scope, it serves to answer a range of questions and provide the reader with conceptual and methodological foundations.

Download or read book Understanding Risks and Uncertainties in Energy and Climate Policy written by Haris Doukas and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-10 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book analyzes and seeks to consolidate the use of robust quantitative tools and qualitative methods for the design and assessment of energy and climate policies. In particular, it examines energy and climate policy performance and associated risks, as well as public acceptance and portfolio analysis in climate policy, and presents methods for evaluating the costs and benefits of flexible policy implementation as well as new framings for business and market actors. In turn, it discusses the development of alternative policy pathways and the identification of optimal switching points, drawing on concrete examples to do so. Lastly, it discusses climate change mitigation policies’ implications for the agricultural, food, building, transportation, service and manufacturing sectors.

Download or read book Handbook of Planning Support Science written by Stan Geertman and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Encompassing a broad range of innovative studies on planning support science, this timely Handbook examines how the consequences of pressing societal challenges can be addressed using computer-based systems. Chapters explore the use of new streams of big and open data as well as data from traditional sources, offering significant critical insights into the field.

Download or read book Utilizing Decision Support Systems for Strategic Public Policy Planning written by Timoulali, Mohamed and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2020-05-29 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in GIS technologies have provided a more robust framework for planners and designers. These frameworks offer greater control and monitoring, which can lead to greater accuracy in policymaking and urban planning. Utilizing Decision Support Systems for Strategic Public Policy Planning is an essential research publication that provides comprehensive research on the possibilities of GIS technology for spatial analysis and visualization. Featuring a wide range of topics such as open data, architecture, and regional development, this book is ideal for design professionals, academicians, policymakers, researchers, professionals, and students.

Download or read book Intelligent Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Computing written by Arun Kumar Sangaiah and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book dicusses the latest research, innovative ideas, challenges and computational intelligence (CI) solutions in sustainable computing. It presents novel, in-depth fundamental research on achieving a sustainable lifestyle for society, either from a methodological or from an application perspective. Sustainable computing has expanded to become a significant research area covering the fields of computer science and engineering, electrical engineering and other engineering disciplines, and there has been an increase in the amount of literature on aspects sustainable computing such as energy efficiency and natural resources conservation that emphasizes the role of ICT (information and communications technology) in achieving system design and operation objectives. The energy impact/design of more efficient IT infrastructures is a key challenge in realizing new computing paradigms. The book explores the uses of computational intelligence (CI) techniques for intelligent decision support that can be exploited to create effectual computing systems, and addresses sustainability problems in computing and information processing environments and technologies at the different levels of CI paradigms. An excellent guide to surveying the state of the art in computational intelligence applied to challenging real-world problems in sustainable computing, it is intended for scientists, practitioners, researchers and academicians dealing with the new challenges and advances in area.

Download or read book Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Decision Support System Technology ICDSST 2018 PROMETHEE DAYS 2018 written by Panagiota Digkoglou and published by EWG-DSS. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Model Based Decision Support Methodology with Environmental Applications written by Andrzej P. Wierzbicki and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complexity of issues requiring rational decision making grows and thus such decisions are becoming more and more difficult, despite advances in methodology and tools for decision support and in other areas of research. Globalization, interlinks between environmental, industrial, social and political issues, and rapid speed of change all contribute to the increase of this complexity. Specialized knowledge about decision-making processes and their support is increasing, but a large spectrum of approaches presented in the literature is typically illustrated only by simple examples. Moreover, the integration of model-based decision support methodologies and tools with specialized model-based knowledge developed for handling real problems in environmental, engineering, industrial, economical, social and political activities is often not satisfactory. Therefore, there is a need to present the state of art of methodology and tools for development of model-based decision support systems, and illustrate this state by applications to various complex real-world decision problems. The monograph reports many years of experience of many researchers, who have not only contributed to the developments in operations research but also succeeded to integrate knowledge and craft of various disciplines into several modern decision support systems which have been applied to actual complex decision-making processes in various fields of policy making. The experience presented in this book will be of value to researchers and practitioners in various fields. The issues discussed in this book gain in importance with the development of the new era of the information society, where information, knowledge, and ways of processing them become a decisive part of human activities. The examples presented in this book illustrate how how various methods and tools of model-based decision support can actually be used for helping modern decision makers that face complex problems. Overview of the contents: The first part of this three-part book presents the methodological background and characteristics of modern decision-making environment, and the value of model-based decision support thus addressing current challenges of decision support. It also provides the methodology of building and analyzing mathematical models that represent underlying physical and economic processes, and that are useful for modern decision makers at various stages of decision making. These methods support not only the analysis of Pareto-efficient solutions that correspond best to decision maker preferences but also allow the use of other modeling concepts like soft constraints, soft simulation, or inverse simulation. The second part describes various types of tools that are used for the development of decision support systems. These include tools for modeling, simulation, optimization, tools supporting choice and user interfaces. The described tools are both standard, commercially available, and nonstandard, public domain or shareware software, which are robust enough to be used also for complex applications. All four environmental applications (regional water quality management, land use planning, cost-effective policies aimed at improving the European air quality, energy planning with environmental implications) presented in the third part of the book rely on many years of cooperation between the authors of the book with several IIASA's projects, and with many researchers from the wide IIASA network of collaborating institutions. All these applications are characterized by an intensive use of model-based decision support. Finally, the appendix contains a short description of some of the tools described in the book that are available from IIASA, free of charge, for research and educational purposes. The experiences reported in this book indicate that the development of DSSs for strategic environmental decision making should be a joint effort involving experts in the subject area, modelers, and decision support experts. For the other experiences discussed in this book, the authors stress the importance of good data bases, and good libraries of tools. One of the most important requirements is a modular structure of a DSS that enhances the reusability of system modules. In such modular structures, user interfaces play an important role. The book shows how modern achievements in mathematical programming and computer sciences may be exploited for supporting decision making, especially about strategic environmental problems. It presents the methodological background of various methods for model-based decision support and reviews methods and tools for model development and analysis. The methods and tools are amply illustrated with extensive applications. Audience: This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in the fields of model development and analysis, model-based decision analysis and support, (particularly in the environment, economics, agriculture, engineering, and negotiations areas) and mathematical programming. For understanding of some parts of the text a background in mathematics and operational research is required but several chapters of the book will be of value also for readers without such a background. The monograph is also suitable for use as a text book for courses on advanced (Master and Ph.D.) levels for programs on Operations Research, decision analysis, decision support and various environmental studies (depending on the program different parts of the book may be emphasized).

Download or read book Sustainable Energy And Environmental Technology Proceedings Of The Asia pacific Conference written by Aik Chong Lua and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1996-06-17 with total page 696 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The countries in the Asia-Pacific region enjoy economic growth rates amongst the highest in the world today. It has transformed the nature of their industries and raised the living standards of the populace. The accelerated developments in these countries have, however, created severe demands on energy and the environment.This conference aimed to address issues related to energy and environmental protection in the quest for sustainble development. It will bring together participants from academia, industries and government agencies, from over 18 countries primarily in the Asia-Pacific region, and provide a forum for them to interact, share information, report research in progress and identify opportunities in the relevant fields.

Download or read book Handbook on Decision Making written by Chee Peng Lim and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decision making arises when we wish to select the best possible course of action from a set of alternatives. With advancements of the digital technologies, it is easy, and almost instantaneous, to gather a large volume of information and/or data pertaining to a problem that we want to solve. For instance, the world-wi- web is perhaps the primary source of information and/or data that we often turn to when we face a decision making problem. However, the information and/or data that we obtain from the real world often are complex, and comprise various kinds of noise. Besides, real-world information and/or data often are incomplete and ambiguous, owing to uncertainties of the environments. All these make decision making a challenging task. To cope with the challenges of decision making, - searchers have designed and developed a variety of decision support systems to provide assistance in human decision making processes. The main aim of this book is to provide a small collection of techniques stemmed from artificial intelligence, as well as other complementary methodo- gies, that are useful for the design and development of intelligent decision support systems. Application examples of how these intelligent decision support systems can be utilized to help tackle a variety of real-world problems in different - mains, e. g. business, management, manufacturing, transportation and food ind- tries, and biomedicine, are also presented. A total of twenty chapters, which can be broadly divided into two parts, i. e.

Download or read book Proceedings of the 3rd International Gas Processing Symposium written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural gas continues to be the fuel of choice for power generation and feedstock for a range of petrochemical industries. This trend is driven by environmental, economic and supply considerations with a balance clearly tilting in favor of natural gas as both fuel and feedstock. Despite the recent global economic uncertainty, the oil and gas industry is expected to continue its growth globally, especially in emerging economies. The expansion in LNG capacity beyond 2011 and 2012 coupled with recently launched and on-stream GTL plants poses real technological and environmental challenges. These important developments coupled with a global concern on green house gas emissions provide a fresh impetus to engage in new and more focused research activities aimed at mitigating or resolving the challenges facing the industry.Academic researchers and plant engineers in the gas processing industry will benefit from the state of the art papers published in this collection that cover natural gas utilization, sustainability and excellence in gas processing. - Provides state-of-the-art contributions in the area of gas processing - Covers solutions to technical and environmental problems - Input from academia and industry

Download or read book Sustainable Cities written by Amjad Almusaed and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-02-27 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book has been written to represent the efficient applications of sustainability in urban areas. The book intends to illustrate various techniques of action on sustainability on city conception, functions and conformation. This book is divided into four parts and nine chapters: Section I is entitled "Introduction to Sustainable Cities Concept" and contains one chapter "Introductory chapter: Overview of Sustainable Cities Theory and Practices," which discusses sustainability in cities in conception and practice. Section II is entitled "Energy and Environmental Analysis of Sustainable Cities Models." This includes four chapters. It expresses the effect of the environment and energy embodiment on city configuration and function. Section III is entitled "The Role of Transport in a Sustainable City." This part includes two chapters. Section IV is entitled "The influence of Social and Economic Factors in Urban Space Conception." It includes two chapters.

Download or read book Integrated Spatial and Energy Planning written by Gernot Stoeglehner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-02 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on spatial planning – an important determinant of energy saving and renewable energy supply. Revealing the key driving forces for spatial development supporting the shift towards energy efficiency and renewable energy supplies, it shows the importance of integrated spatial and energy planning approaches for a timely and sustainable change of energy systems, thus supporting policies of climate protection. As operating within the context of renewable energy sources is becoming a major policy issue at the international, European and national level, spatial dimensions of renewable energy systems as well as challenges, barriers and opportunities in different spatial contexts become more important. This book analyses not only the fundamental system interrelations between resources, technologies and consumption patterns with respect to energy, but also the links to the spatial context, and provides guidelines for researchers as well as practitioners in this new, emerging field. It presents innovative analytical tools to solve real-world problems and discusses the most important fields of action in integrated spatial and energy planning including planning contents, planning visions and principles as well as planning process design and planning methodology.

Download or read book Rural Electrification Through Decentralised Off grid Systems in Developing Countries written by Subhes Bhattacharyya and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity. Although extension of the electricity grid remains the preferred mode of electrification, off-grid electrification can offer a solution to such cases. Rural Electrification through Decentralised Off-grid Systems in Developing Countries provides a review of rural electrification experiences with an emphasis on off-grid electrification and presents business-related aspects including participatory arrangements, financing, and regulatory governance. Organized in three parts, Rural Electrification through Decentralised Off-grid Systems in Developing Countries provides comprehensive coverage and state-of-the art reviews which appraise the reader of the latest trend in the thinking. The first part presents the background information on electricity access, discusses the developmental implications of lack of electricity infrastructure and provides a review of alternative off-grid technologies. The second part presents a review of experiences from various regions (South Asia, China, Africa, South East Asia and South America). Finally, the third part deals with business dimensions and covers participatory business models, funding challenges for electrification and regulatory and governance issues. Based on the research carried out under the EPSRC/ DfID funded research grant for off-grid electrification in South Asia, Rural Electrification through Decentralised Off-grid Systems in Developing Countries provides a multi-disciplinary perspective of the rural electrification challenge through off-grid systems. Providing a practical introduction for students, this is also a key reference for engineers and governing bodies working with off-grid electrification.

Download or read book Down to Earth written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-10-24 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1992, world leaders adopted Agenda 21, the work program of the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development. This landmark event provided a political foundation and action items to facilitate the global transition toward sustainable development. The international community marked the tenth anniversary of this conference in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August 2002. Down to Earth, a component of the U.S. State Department's "Geographic Information for Sustainable Development" project for the World Summit, focuses on sub-Saharan Africa with examples drawn from case-study regions where the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies have broad experience. Although African countries are the geographic focus of the study, the report has broader applicability. Down to Earth summarizes the importance and applicability of geographic data for sustainable development and draws on experiences in African countries to examine how future sources and applications of geographic data could provide reliable support to decision-makers as they work towards sustainable development. The committee emphasizes the potential of new technologies, such as satellite remote-sensing systems and geographic information systems, that have revolutionized data collection and analysis over the last decade.

Download or read book Energy Abstracts for Policy Analysis written by and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 700 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Real World Decision Support Systems written by Jason Papathanasiou and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-19 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents real-world decision support systems, i.e., systems that have been running for some time and as such have been tested in real environments and complex situations; the cases are from various application domains and highlight the best practices in each stage of the system’s life cycle, from the initial requirements analysis and design phases to the final stages of the project. Each chapter provides decision-makers with recommendations and insights into lessons learned so that failures can be avoided and successes repeated. For this reason unsuccessful cases, which at some point of their life cycle were deemed as failures for one reason or another, are also included. All decision support systems are presented in a constructive, coherent and deductive manner to enhance the learning effect. It complements the many works that focus on theoretical aspects or individual module design and development by offering ‘good’ and ‘bad’ practices when developing and using decision support systems. Combining high-quality research with real-world implementations, it is of interest to researchers and professionals in industry alike.