Learning from risks: A tool for post-project risk assessment

Risk management (RM) comprises of risk identification, risk analysis, response planning, monitoring and action planning tasks that are carried out throughout the life cycle of a project in order to ensure that project objectives are met. Although the methodological aspects of RM are well-defined, the philosophical background is rather vague. In this paper, a learning-based approach is proposed. In order to implement this approach in practice, a tool has been developed to facilitate construction of a lessons learned database that contains risk-related information and risk assessment throughout the life cycle of a project. The tool is tested on a real construction project. The case study findings demonstrate that it can be used for storing as well as updating risk-related information and finally, carrying out a post-project appraisal. The major weaknesses of the tool are identified as, subjectivity of the risk rating process and unwillingness of people to enter information about reasons of failure.

The use of risk registers by project managers

The construction industry is widely recognised as being inherent with risk and uncertainty. This necessitates the need for effective project risk management to achieve the project objectives of time, cost and quality. A popular tool employed in projects to aid in the management of risk is a risk register. This tool documents the project risks and is often employed by the Project Manager (PM) to manage the associated risks on a project. This research aims to ascertain how widely risk registers are used by Project Managers as part of their risk management practices. To achieve this aim entailed interviewing ten PMs, to discuss their use of the risk register as a risk management tool. The results from these interviews indicated the prevalent use of this document and recognised its effectiveness in the management of project risks. The findings identified the front end and feasibility phases of a project as crucial stages for using risk registers, noting it as a vital ingredient in the risk response planning of the decision making process. Moreover, the composition of the risk register was also understood, with an insight into how PMs produce and develop this tool also ascertained. In conclusion, this research signifies the extensive use of the risk register by PMs. A majority of PMs were of the view that risk registers constitute an essential component of their project risk management practices. This suggests a need for further research on the extent to which risk registers actually help PMs to control the risks in a construction project, particularly residual risks, and how this can be improved to minimize deviations from expected outcomes.

Introducing "ecoputation": a universal systems design process

A universal systems design process is specified, tested in a case study and evaluated. It links English narratives to numbers using a categorical language framework with mathematical mappings taking the place of conjunctions and numbers. The framework is a ring of English narrative words between 1 (option) and 360 (capital); beyond 360 the ring cycles again to 1. English narratives are shown to correspond to the field of fractional numbers. The process can enable the development, presentation and communication of complex narrative policy information among communities of any scale, on a software implementation known as the "ecoputer". The information is more accessible and comprehensive than that in conventional decision support, because: (1) it is expressed in narrative language; and (2) the narratives are expressed as compounds of words within the framework. Hence option generation is made more effective than in conventional decision support processes including Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis, Life Cycle Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis.The case study is of a participatory workshop in UK bioenergy project objectives and criteria, at which attributes were elicited in environmental, economic and social systems. From the attributes, the framework was used to derive consequences at a range of levels of precision; these are compared with the project objectives and criteria as set out in the Case for Support. The design process is to be supported by a social information manipulation, storage and retrieval system for numeric and verbal narratives attached to the "ecoputer". The "ecoputer" will have an integrated verbal and numeric operating system. Novel design source code language will assist the development of narrative policy. The utility of the program, including in the transition to sustainable development and in applications at both community micro-scale and policy macro-scale, is discussed from public, stakeholder, corporate, Governmental and regulatory perspectives.

LiDAR mapping of tidal marshes for ecogeomorphological modelling in the TIDE project

The European research project TIDE (Tidal Inlets Dynamics and Environment) is developing and validating coupled models describing the morphological, biological and ecological evolution of tidal environments. The interactions between the physical and biological processes occurring in these regions requires that the system be studied as a whole rather than as separate parts. Extensive use of remote sensing including LiDAR is being made to provide validation data for the modelling. This paper describes the different uses of LiDAR within the project and their relevance to the TIDE science objectives. LiDAR data have been acquired from three different environments, the Venice Lagoon in Italy, Morecambe Bay in England, and the Eden estuary in Scotland. LiDAR accuracy at each site has been evaluated using ground reference data acquired with differential GPS. A semi-automatic technique has been developed to extract tidal channel networks from LiDAR data either used alone or fused with aerial photography. While the resulting networks may require some correction, the procedure does allow network extraction over large areas using objective criteria and reduces fieldwork requirements. The networks extracted may subsequently be used in geomorphological analyses, for example to describe the drainage patterns induced by networks and to examine the rate of change of networks. Estimation of the heights of the low and sparse vegetation on marshes is being investigated by analysis of the statistical distribution of the measured LiDAR heights. Species having different mean heights may be separated using the first-order moments of the height distribution.

The GCM–Reality Intercomparison Project for SPARC (GRIPS): scientific issues and initial results

To investigate the effects of the middle atmosphere on climate, the World Climate Research Programme is supporting the project "Stratospheric Processes and their Role in Climate" (SPARC). A central theme of SPARC, to examine model simulations of the coupled troposphere—middle atmosphere system, is being performed through the initiative called GRIPS (GCM—Reality Intercomparison Project for SPARC). In this paper, an overview of the objectives of GRIPS is given. Initial activities include an assessment of the performance of middle atmosphere climate models, and preliminary results from this evaluation are presented here. It is shown that although all 13 models evaluated represent most major features of the mean atmospheric state, there are deficiencies in the magnitude and location of the features, which cannot easily be traced to the formulation (resolution or the parameterizations included) of the models. Most models show a cold bias in all locations, apart from the tropical tropopause region where they can be either too warm or too cold. The strengths and locations of the major jets are often misrepresented in the models. Looking at three—dimensional fields reveals, for some models, more severe deficiencies in the magnitude and positioning of the dominant structures (such as the Aleutian high in the stratosphere), although undersampling might explain some of these differences from observations. All the models have shortcomings in their simulations of the present—day climate, which might limit the accuracy of predictions of the climate response to ozone change and other anomalous forcing.

Sustainable urban metabolism as a link between bio-physical sciences and urban planning: the BRIDGE project

Urban metabolism considers a city as a system with flows of energy and material between it and the environment. Recent advances in bio-physical sciences provide methods and models to estimate local scale energy, water, carbon and pollutant fluxes. However, good communication is required to provide this new knowledge and its implications to endusers (such as urban planners, architects and engineers). The FP7 project BRIDGE (sustainaBle uRban plannIng Decision support accountinG for urban mEtabolism) aimed to address this gap by illustrating the advantages of considering these issues in urban planning. The BRIDGE Decision Support System (DSS) aids the evaluation of the sustainability of urban planning interventions. The Multi Criteria Analysis approach adopted provides a method to cope with the complexity of urban metabolism. In consultation with targeted end-users, objectives were defined in relation to the interactions between the environmental elements (fluxes of energy, water, carbon and pollutants) and socioeconomic components (investment costs, housing, employment, etc.) of urban sustainability. The tool was tested in five case study cities: Helsinki, Athens, London, Florence and Gliwice; and sub-models were evaluated using flux data selected. This overview of the BRIDGE project covers the methods and tools used to measure and model the physical flows, the selected set of sustainability indicators, the methodological framework for evaluating urban planning alternatives and the resulting DSS prototype.

The global-scale impacts of climate change: the QUEST-GSI project

This paper introduces the special issue of Climatic Change on the QUEST-GSI project, a global-scale multi-sectoral assessment of the impacts of climate change. The project used multiple climate models to characterise plausible climate futures with consistent baseline climate and socio-economic data and consistent assumptions, together with a suite of global-scale sectoral impacts models. It estimated impacts across sectors under specific SRES emissions scenarios, and also constructed functions relating impact to change in global mean surface temperature. This paper summarises the objectives of the project and its overall methodology, outlines how the project approach has been used in subsequent policy-relevant assessments of future climate change under different emissions futures, and summarises the general lessons learnt in the project about model validation and the presentation of multi-sector, multi-region impact assessments and their associated uncertainties to different audiences.

PMIP4-CMIP6: the contribution of the Paleoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project to CMIP6

The goal of the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP) is to understand the response of the climate system to changes in different climate forcings and to feedbacks. Through comparison with observations of the environmental impacts of these climate changes, or with climate reconstructions based on physical, chemical or biological records, PMIP also addresses the issue of how well state-of-the-art models simulate climate changes. Palaeoclimate states are radically different from those of the recent past documented by the instrumental record and thus provide an out-of-sample test of the models used for future climate projections and a way to assess whether they have the correct sensitivity to forcings and feedbacks. Five distinctly different periods have been selected as focus for the core palaeoclimate experiments that are designed to contribute to the objectives of the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). This manuscript describes the motivation for the choice of these periods and the design of the numerical experiments, with a focus upon their novel features compared to the experiments performed in previous phases of PMIP and CMIP as well as the benefits of common analyses of the models across multiple climate states. It also describes the information needed to document each experiment and the model outputs required for analysis and benchmarking.