Transboundary impact assessment: frameworks,experiences and challenges

Transboundary impact assessment has been carried out for many years but only now is it becomingnormal practice in Europe at the project level. This is occurring because of clear legal frameworks, including bilateral and multilateral agreements, and long experience in finding solutions to the many practical problems. However, many challenges remain, especially (a) in regions with unclear or weak provisions for transboundary impact assessment; and (b) for more strategic decisions for which we have little experience in transboundary impact assessment, notably for policies, plans and programmes likely to have significant transboundary effects and for transboundary activities.     

A Comparison of U.S. and European Project Manager Decision-Making Styles

ABSTRACT

This research effort was an exploratory assessment of the decision-making leadership styles of U.S. and European project managers. Data were obtained via the Jerrell/Slevin 20-question survey from 65 U.S. and 63 European project managers during 1993 and 1994. The data reflect a high degree of similarity between U.S. and European managers in both the overall Decision Authority score and the overall Group's Information Input To Decision score. Statistical differences of the variables within the Decision Authority component are evident in the U.S. project managers more-frequent tendency to let groups decide the vacation and work schedules. However, U.S. managers employ less participation in their attempts to obtain quicker results. Within the Group's Information Input To Decision component, statistical differences indicate that the Europeans feel it is easier to make decisions in groups, but the data suggest that U.S. managers are more inclined to use information from subordinates. Although experience level based on number of years as a project manager appears to show little difference, the overall Decision Authority component is influenced by the number of projects managed.     

Use of risk assessment in the nuclear industry with specific reference to the Australian situation

The use of risk assessment in the nuclear industry began in the 1970s as a complementary approach to the deterministic methods used to assess the safety of nuclear facilities. As experience with the theory and application of probabilistic methods has grown, so too has its application. In the last decade, the use of probabilistic safety assessment has become commonplace for all phases of the life of a plant, including siting, design, construction, operation and decommissioning. In the particular case of operation of plant, the use of a ‘living’ safety case or probabilistic safety assessment, building upon operational experience, is becoming more widespread, both as an operational tool and as a basis for communication with the regulator. In the case of deciding upon a site for a proposed reactor, use is also being made of probabilistic methods in defining the effect of design parameters. Going hand in hand with this increased use of risk based methods has been the development of assessment criteria against which to judge the results being obtained from the risk analyses. This paper reviews the use of risk assessment in the light of the need for acceptability criteria and shows how these tools are applied in the Australian nuclear industry, with specific reference to the probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) performed of HIFAR.     

Elements of an Optimal Capstone Design Experience

This paper presents and assesses a framework for an engineering capstone design program. We explain how student preparation, project selection, and instructor mentorship are the three key elements that must be addressed before the capstone experience is ready for the students. Next, we describe a way to administer and execute the capstone design experience including design workshops and lead engineers. We describe the importance of assessing the capstone design experience and report recent assessment results of our framework. We comment specifically on what students thought were the most important aspects of their experience in engineering capstone design and provide quantitative insight into what parts of the framework are most important.     

Transdisciplinary technological futures: An ethnographic research dialogue between social scientists and engineers

This paper suggests that transdisciplinarity is rising as a powerful epistemic strategy for research in technology-related fields such as engineering. Though this topic has been approached from a philosophical perspective, we know little about the actual shape that transdisciplinarity might take in research and action. How is transdisciplinarity operationalized in research and professional practice? As a case study, we report an assessment study of communication modes and content used by engineering students in a special project-course, Robotics for Theater, focused on the planning and construction of a robot from scratch, to support theatric production as actor and prop. Our assessment tools were based on ethnographic research and included questionnaires, journals, and students' expressions of their views on the communication and learning processes. Analysis of the case study of the Robotics for Theater project revealed that: 1. Resource mobilization was fostered by the role of the advisor as information facilitator and “weak tie” in the network, and also by the frequent informal contacts among the students in the team. 2. Innovation was fostered by intra-team trust. The strong friendship and teaming experience of the group were critical for effective team dynamics. 3. Probably due to time constraints, the field of theater did not become a fundamental reference of the project, contrary to plans. 4. Time constraints and technical difficulties in implementation inhibited progress. 5. Informal meetings were crucial in the progression of design and implementation.     

Impact assessment: tiering approaches for sustainable development planning and decision-making of a large infrastructure project

ABSTRACT

The objective of this paper is to analyze a tiering scoping approach developed to identify critical multidimensional sustainability issues and impacts of a large infrastructure project: the land transport project linking northern Brazil with a new port on Guyana’s coast. The Inter-American Development Bank awarded a technical assignment to develop the terms of reference of a country environmental assessment, a strategic environmental and social assessment and an environmental and social impact assessment of the project(s). The complexity of the issues at stake lead to the design of a tiered assessment process supported by wide-ranging participative sessions involving 170 individuals from Guyana and Brazil and from diverse sectors. The process identified ex ante conditionalities, critical factors for decision-making and valued socioenvironmental and governance components. Such complex and determinant planning initiatives for the future of a country need to be supported by comprehensive, well-sequenced scoping processes.     

Assessing the Process Maturity Utilized in Software Engineering Team Project Courses*

Many computer science departments offer an introductory software engineering course, which normally provides an introduction to software engineering topics in conjunction with a semester long team project. To ensure students acquire the correct lessons from this project experience, it is essential that the teams utilize well‐defined software development processes similar to those practiced by leading software development organizations. Since its inception, the Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model (CMM) has served as a guide for organizations seeking to improve their development practices, through a self‐assessment questionnaire. In an effort to assess the maturity of development practices utilized in software engineering courses, an “academic” version of the CMM questionnaire was developed. This questionnaire was distributed to a sample of software engineering instructors in an effort to assess the maturity of academic software engineering course projects. The questionnaire and the survey results are presented and discussed.     

HIA practices in Nigeria

Health impact assessment (HIA) provides useful information on existing health services, their capabilities and the health status of the local communities, which is otherwise often unavailable. In Nigeria, HIA is usually applied to projects and, by exposing existing health inequities in project communities, provides the necessary tool for development proponents to act to provide or improve health services and to implement health promotion activities. Based on HIA experience in Nigeria, this paper highlights the deficiencies in national legislation with regards to HIA/EIA (environmental impact assessment) integration and a number of learning points are discussed. First, a complete health baseline is critical to the understanding of project impacts; analysis must be broad-based, considering existing health determinants. Second, community stakeholders and proponents may modify the implementation of health mitigation measures and should be seen as collaborators in the assessment process. Third, strong HIA recommendations can influence project design. A greater participation of the health sector in EIA is required to enhance HIA utilization.     

Four Strategies to Integrate Assessment into the Engineering Educational Environment*

Integrating a process of assessment and continuous improvement into academic programs has become a major goal of every engineering educational institution in the United States. This paper draws upon extensive experience in the development and implementation of comprehensive educational assessment and continuous improvement programs in several universities associated with the National Science Foundation's Gateway Coalition for Undergraduate Engineering Education. Through a systems approach, this paper describes four integrated strategies designed to imbed assessment and continuous improvement in the educational environment.     

PUGH概念选择法在产品设计中的应用研究

目的在产品开发过程中,由于众多设计人员参与,导致设计方案的确定加入了人的主观情感,使得设计方案的确定变得盲目和随从,设计人员无法从众多方案中进行最优方案的选择。针对这个问题,提出PUGH概念选择法,为产品设计方案的选择提供有效的评判工具,可以让设计人员从众多设计方案中得到最优设计方案。方法提出在产品设计过程中应用PUGH概念选择法,通过将马斯洛需求层次理论与用户体验相结合并确定PUGH矩阵判断标准和基准方案,由评估小组根据判断标准和基准方案对可选方案进行比较,并对可选方案排序和计算出可选方案的总体性排序,通过总体性排序来确定最优方案,具体以一体式橱柜设计为例进行应用。结论通过对一体式橱柜设计方案的具体应用,验证了PUGH概念选择法在产品设计中的有效性和可行性。     

移动医疗关键业务实施思考

移动医疗项目的关键业务有具有技术新、使用面广的特点,其关键业务包括病人医疗信息查询、医嘱录入、护理病历录入、医嘱执行四个方面的内容。笔者根据一年多来在医院移动医疗项目上实施体验,结合信息科工作的定位,总结了在医护人员培训、接口代码控制、软硬件维护三个方面的实施感受。     

Promotion of wind energy in isolated energy systems: the case of the Orites wind farm

With the establishment of the first wind farm on the island, Cyprus has made progress to satisfy the European Union’s 2020 renewable energy targets. Operational since September 2010, the 174 M€ Orites wind farm is currently the largest wind project in the Mediterranean region. In this article, the main characteristics of the project with regard to Cyprus’s national action plan for the promotion of renewable energy sources are presented. The socio-economic impacts of the project and its feasibility in the context of an isolated energy system are also examined. The results of a public survey to identify the attitudes of surrounding households and neighbouring cities towards the wind farm are presented. The assessment was based on face-to-face interviews conducted with 50 households from the surrounding communities and 100 interviewees from neighbouring cities. According to the survey, the public opinion on the wind farm was generally positive, and the majority of the respondents considered the wind farm to be acceptable as of no considerable environmental impact.     

Experience,Equity and Foreign Investment Risk: A PIC Perspective

We analyze foreign investment risk-mitigating effects of host-country policy stability, firm experience and equity stakes using an empirical context largely ignored by international business (IB) research: project investment companies (PICs). PICs permit cleaner separation of individual investment project risk from the parent firm, which may otherwise pool risk characteristics from managing multiple projects across different industries and countries. PICs also permit potentially unbiased, prospective risk assessment at the time of a project’s initial announcement based on the mix of debt and equity funding the project. Consistent with previous IB research, our analyses of 396 PICs announced in 53 countries from 1990–2006 indicate that investment risk measured as the percentage of equity-to-total capital funding a PIC decreases with greater host-country policy stability, lead-investor experience in the host country, and lead-investor equity stakes. But contrary to previous IB research, we find that lead-sponsor experience and equity stakes reduce investment risk less as host-country policy stability decreases. From a PIC perspective, investor experience and equity stakes are complements to (not substitutes for) host-country policy stability. Our PIC-based evidence re-invigorates research and related practice and policy debates about how investor experience and equity holdings affect foreign project decisions and suggests new avenues for future work.     

Freshwater cumulative effects and environmental assessment in the Mackenzie Valley,Northwest Territories: challenges and decision-maker needs

ABSTRACT

There is a recognized need to advance cumulative effects assessment to regional and ecologically meaningful scales, but such initiatives are often critiqued for being isolated from management contexts and the regulatory practices of project-based environmental assessment. A major challenge is that there has been limited attention devoted to understanding decision-making at the project level, and the value of monitoring data to support cumulative effects analysis. This article examines how cumulative effects are considered during environmental assessment decision-making within the context of freshwater management in the Mackenzie Valley, Northwest Territories. Interviews with representatives from organizations involved in environmental assessment, regulation, and monitoring are used to identify challenges to applying information about cumulative effects at the project scale. Results reinforce the need for regional approaches and improvements in information and monitoring capacities to support cumulative effects analysis, but also the need to address institutional and organizational deficiencies to ensure that the data and information generated are useful to and applied within project-based decision-making.     

How strategic environmental assessment can inform lenders about potential environmental risks

In this paper, we explore the potential for strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to be a useful tool for banks to manage environmental risks and inform lending decisions. SEA is an environmental assessment tool that was developed to assist strategic-level decision-makers, such as policy-makers, planners, government authorities and environmental practitioners in improving developmental outcomes, aiming to facilitate the transition to sustainable development. We propose that SEA may also be a valuable tool for banks because it has the capacity to provide information about environmental risks at a time when it can be used as an input to bank lending decisions, which can assist banks in making lending decisions with better environmental outcomes. For these reasons, we argue that in some circumstances, and particularly for project finance transactions, SEA may be a more useful environmental assessment tool for lenders than environmental impact assessment, which many banks are currently relying on to help assess and mitigate environmental risks. Furthermore, we suggest that the use of SEA by banks would contribute to the sustainability goals of SEA.     

RADIUS--closing the circle on the assessment of imaging performance

The RADIUS (Radiological Imaging Unification Strategy) project addresses the assessment of image quality in terms of both physical and clinically relevant measures. The aim is to unify our understanding of both types of measure as well as the numerous underlying factors that play a key role in the assessments of imaging performance. In this way it is expected to provide a solid basis for the improvement in radiological safety management, where not only radiation risks are considered but also diagnostic risks of incorrect clinical outcomes (i.e. false positive/false negative). The project has applied a variety of relevant experimental and theoretical methods to this problem, which is generic to medical imaging as a whole. Digital radiography of the chest and the breast has been employed as the clinical imaging domain vehicles for the study. The project addressed the problem from the following directions: role and relevance of pathology, human observer studies including receiver operating characteristics, image quality criteria analysis, structural noise analysis, physical measurements on clinical images, physical measurements on imaging system, modelling of imaging system, modelling of visual processes, modelling of doses delivered and IT-based scientific support strategies. This paper presents an overview of the main outcomes from this project and highlights how the research outcomes actually apply to the real world. In particular, attention will be focused on new and original findings and methods and techniques that have been developed within the framework of the project. The relevance of the project's outcomes to future European research will also be presented.     

The built environment as a component of quality care: understanding and including the patient's perspective.

BACKGROUND: Although there has been little systematic assessment of how the built environment of health care facilities affects the quality of care, the built environment is a major element of structure of care--one of three facets of quality. Yet in contrast to the growing trend of using consumer perceptions of both processes and outcomes of care in QI activities, quality assessments of the structure of care do not currently rely on patient feedback. PURPOSE OF PROJECT: During the initial phase of a multiphase project, nine focus groups were conducted in 1997 to identify the salient dimensions of experience from the patient's perspective. The content of these focus groups guided the development of assessment tools in the second phase of the project, which began in February 1998. FINDINGS: Participants in three focus groups that were held in each of three settings--ambulatory care, acute care, and long term care--described in detail a variety of reactions to the built environment. Analysis revealed eight consistent themes in what patients and family member consumers look for in the built environment of health care. In all three settings, they want an environment, for example, that facilitates a connection to staff and caregivers, is conducive to a sense of well-being, and facilitates a connection to the outside world. DISCUSSION: Data derived from the focus group research has guided the development of quantitative survey and assessment tools. For each setting, patient-centered checklists and questionnaires are designed to help institutions set priorities for the improvement of facility design from the patient's perspective.     

A Comprehensive Approach to Dynamic Project Risk Management

A large percentage of projects suffer performance, cost, and/or schedule problems. There are many reasons why projects fail, including an inadequate approach to risk management. Inadequate approaches result when a comprehensive identification of risks is not performed at project commencement, when risk assessment fails to consider important aspects, when no subsequent follow-up is carried out for mitigation strategies adopted, when no further identification of risks during project execution is completed, or a combination of these occurs. A number of publications have dealt with different facets of risk management, but not in a comprehensive way. This article compiles the approaches applied and observed by the author based on 25 years of industry experience; these observations were synthesized and result in a procedure for dynamic risk management successfully applied to a number of projects. The use of a broad array of techniques is suggested to identify risks, which are then thoroughly analyzed. The assessment was performed using a comprehensive array of criteria. The complete set of criteria included essential ones such as aggregability factor, triggering factor, early warning, immediacy, and recoverability. The thorough assessment was done dynamically. The initial assessment enables the adoption of the most adequate mitigation strategies, which later on are dynamically validated. New risks are also detected and dealt with dynamically throughout project execution. The main contribution of this work is the synthesis of state-of-the-art knowledge into a state-of-the-practice procedure, which can be applied by engineering managers in all sectors and in all phases of project execution.     

Overview of the HIDA Project

HIDA is a large research, development and validation project aimed at harmonising and expanding current high temperature crack assessment procedures and practices with a view to developing a unified European/International procedure. The project involves analysis of currently available data and generation of data from various standard fracture mechanics and validation type feature specimens on a range of steels used in high temperature plant. The project covers creep, high temperature fatigue and creep fatigue interaction.

HIDA is supported by the European Commission's Brite Euram programme. It is a collaborative programme between eleven organisations from seven European countries.

This paper outlines the background issues and methodology being applied to achieve the project objectives. Details of progress to date are covered in other papers being presented at this Conference.     

舰船设计方案技术风险评估指标体系研究

对于新研装备,技术风险的度量和管理十分重要.为了合理度量舰船装备研制中所隐藏的技术风险,分析了舰船装备设计方案及其特点,在此基础上,运用技术成熟度评价方法,构建了舰船研制方案技术风险评估的指标体系.该指标体系借鉴技术成熟度评价的思想,结合舰船武器装备设计方案的特点,使设计方案技术风险评估具有实用性和可操作性,有效地解决了设计方案所隐含的技术风险量化问题.该指标体系对其它装备的技术风险评估也具有一定的借鉴作用.