A dynamic approach for evaluating earthwork hauls in construction

A graph theoretic approach is developed for accurately computing haulage costs in earthwork projects. This is vital as haulage is a predominant factor in the real cost of earthworks. A variety of metrics can be used in our approach, but a fuel consumption proxy is recommended. This approach is novel as it considers the constantly changing terrain that results from cutting and filling activities and replaces inaccurate “static” calculations that have been used previously. The approach is also capable of efficiently correcting the violation of top down cutting and bottom up filling conditions that can be found in existing earthwork assignments and sequences. This approach assumes that the project site is partitioned into uniform blocks. A directed graph is then utilised to describe the terrain surface. This digraph is altered after each cut and fill, in order to reflect the true state of the terrain. A shortest path algorithm is successively applied to calculate the cost of each haul and these costs are summed to provide a total cost of haulage

Industry-school partnerships : an ecological approach

Internationally, Industry-School Partnerships (ISPs) are a ubiquitous government approach for enabling school to work transitions. Significant benefits of ISPs for centralised bureaucracies that are seeking to address common educational problems include: i) cost reduction; ii) supply to geographically dispersed locations, and; iii) industry access to innovative education solutions. In Queensland, there exists a government led ISP, the Gateway to Industry Schools Program. Under this initiative is the Queensland Minerals and Energy Academy, a lead industry organisation for 34 schools and 17 multinational sponsor companies. Acquiring an understanding of this strategic ISP is critical, given the current Resources Industry boom, and the workforce skills shortage experienced in Australia. This review paper adopts Ecological Systems Theory as a lens to understand the inner workings of ISPs. Acknowledging that ISPs will remain a key feature of government policy, this paper seeks to further illuminate the role of ISPs in transitioning young people from school to the working world.

Adapting an argumentation framework for online discourse analysis : a knowledge building approach

The use of online tools to support teaching and learning is now commonplace within educational institutions, with many of these institutions mandating or strongly encouraging the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning. Consequently, these institutions generally adopt a learning management system (LMS), with a fixed set of collaborative tools, in the belief that effective teaching and learning approaches will be used, to allow students to build knowledge. While some studies into the use of an LMS’s still identify continued didactic approaches to teaching and learning, the focus of this paper is on the ability of collaborative tools such as discussion forums, to build knowledge. In the context of science education, argumentation is touted as playing an important role in this process of knowledge building. However, there is limited research into argumentation in other domains using online discussion and a blended learning approach. This paper describes a study, using design research, which adapts a framework for argumentation that can be applied to other domains. In particular it will focus on an adapted social argumentation schema to identify argument in a discussion forum of N=16 participants in a secondary High School.

A novel method for quantifying the criticality and vulnerability of the components of railway bridges

Conditions of bridges deteriorate with age, due to different critical factors including, changes in loading, fatigue, environmental effects and natural events. In order to rate a network of bridges, based on their structural condition, the condition of the components of a bridge and their effects on behaviour of the bridge should be reliably estimated. In this paper, a new method for quantifying the criticality and vulnerability of the components of the railway bridges in a network will be introduced. The type of structural analyses for identifying the criticality of the components for carrying train loads will be determined. In addition to that, the analytical methods for identifying the vulnerability of the components to natural events whose probability of occurrence is important, such as, flood, wind, earthquake and collision will be determined. In order to maintain the practicality of this method to be applied to a network of thousands of railway bridges, the simplicity of structural analysis has been taken into account. Demand by capacity ratios of the components at both safety and serviceability condition states as well as weighting factors used in current bridge management systems (BMS) are taken into consideration. It will be explained what types of information related to the structural condition of a bridge is required to be obtained, recorded and analysed. The authors of this paper will use this method in a new rating system introduced previously. Enhancing accuracy and reliability of evaluating and predicting the vulnerability of railway bridges to environmental effects and natural events will be the significant achievement of this research.

The use of Facebook in tertiary education : case study of a unit-related Facebook page in a university justice class

Purpose – This study aims to evaluate the usefulness of a university unit Facebook page, which was established to support a first-year university justice unit. The study pays particular regard to the Facebook page's impact on students learning outcomes and communications amongst students and between students and teaching staff. Design/methodology/approach – All students enrolled in the unit were asked to complete an online survey, which sought to determine whether they used the unit Facebook page and if so, the nature and extent of their use. Findings – The study found that the unit Facebook page was useful in achieving most learning objectives for the unit. This included enhancing students' knowledge and understanding of unit content, as well as their ability to critically analyse unit materials. Students also indicated that they found the Facebook page better than the university's central learning management system across a range of areas. It was particularly useful for facilitating unit-related discussions. Research limitations/implications – The survey results reported in this paper are based on a relatively small sample of students (n=67) from a first-year university justice unit. Future studies should seek to garner evidence from broader and larger samples that transcend specific unit populations. However, the findings of this study do indicate further support for the use of Facebook as a supplementary tool in university education. Originality/value – This study focuses on two aspects of social networking technologies that have not been previously researched and thus contributes to the growing literature on the uses and benefits of Facebook in tertiary education.

Can water security be achieved in the urban environment through the implementation of the Neo Institutional theory government regulation and legislation?

The research seeks to address the current global water crisis and the built environments effect on the increasing demand for sustainability and water security. The fundamental question in determining the correct approach for water security in the built environment is whether government regulation and legislation could provide the framework for sustainable development and the conscious shift providing that change is the only perceivable option, there is no alternative. This article will attempt to analyse the value of the neo institutional theory as a method for directing individuals and companies to conform to water saving techniques. As is highlighted throughout the article, it will be investigated whether an incentive verse punishment approach to government legislations and regulations would provide the framework required to ensure water security within the built environment. Individuals and companies make certain choices or perform certain actions not because they fear punishment or attempt to conform; neither do they do so because an action is appropriate or feels some sort of social obligation. Instead, the cognitive element of neo institutionalism suggests that individuals make certain choices because they can conceive no alternative. The research seeks to identify whether sustainability and water security can become integrated into all aspects of design and architecture through the perception that 'there is no alternative.' This report seeks to address the omission of water security in the built environment by reporting on a series of investigations, interviews, literature reviews, exemplars and statistics relating to the built environment and the potential for increased water security. The results and analysis support the conclusions that through the support of government and local council, sustainability in the built environment could be achieved and become common practice for developments. Highlighted is the approach required for water management systems integration into the built environment and how these can be developed and maintained effectively between cities, states, countries and cultures.

A systemic view of innovation adoption in the Australian beef industry

Significant investments in developing technological innovations have been made in the Australian beef industry but with low adoption rates. By modelling the key variables and their interactions in the innovation adoption process, this research seeks to demonstrate the complexity and dynamics of the process. This research uses causal loop modelling and develops a holistic model of the current innovation adoption system in the Australian beef industry to show the complexity of dynamic interactions among multiple variables. It is suggested that innovation adoption is such an extremely complex issue, and we need to shift our views on this issue from a paradigm of linear thinking to systems thinking. Innovation adoption is more likely to be enhanced based on a full understanding of the complexity and dynamics of the system as a whole. The paper demonstrates to practitioners and developers of innovation the multiple variables and interactions impacting innovation adoption.

An interactive planning and scheduling framework for optimising pits-to-crushers operations

In this paper, an interactive planning and scheduling framework are proposed for optimising operations from pits to crushers in ore mining industry. Series of theoretical and practical operations research techniques are investigated to improve the overall efficiency of mining systems due to the facts that mining managers need to tackle optimisation problems within different horizons and with different levels of detail. Under this framework, mine design planning,mine production sequencing and mine transportation scheduling models are integrated and interacted within a whole optimisation system. The proposed integrated framework could be used by mining industry for reducing equipment costs, improving the production efficiency and maximising the net present value.

An investigation of the impacts of Excellence in Research for Australia : a case study on accounting for research

This is the first study to explore the way Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), a research assessment exercise introduced in the Australian higher education sector in 2010, fostered the development of strategically oriented Management Accounting technologies in the form of Performance Management Systems (PMS) to achieve research excellence within an Australian university. It identifies ERA's intended and unintended consequences. While ERA enabled the creation of tighter controls in the PMS of faculties, departments and individual academics within the university, enhancing its reported research performance, the impact on academics was low job satisfaction, increased workload and a higher focus on research than teaching.

The Language : Rationale and Fundamentals

The Business Process Management domain has evolved at a dramatic pace over the past two decades and the notion of the business process has become a ubiquitous part of the modern business enterprise. Most organizations now view their operations in terms of business processes and manage these business processes in the same way as other corporate assets. In recent years, an increasingly broad range of generic technology has become available for automating business processes. This is part of a growing trend in the software engineering field throughout the past 40 years, where aspects of functionality that are potentially reusable on a widespread basis have coalesced into generic software components. Figure 2.1 illustrates this trend and shows how software systems have evolved from the monolithic applications of the 1960s developed in their entirety often by a single development team to today’s offerings that are based on the integration of a range of generic technologies with only a small component of the application actually being developed from scratch. In the 1990s, generic functionality for the automation of business processes first became commercially available in the form of workflow technology and subsequently evolved in the broader field of business process management systems (BPMS). This technology alleviated the necessity to develop process support within applications from scratch and provided a variety of off-the-shelf options on which these requirements could be based. The demand for this technology was significant and it is estimated that by 2000 there were well over 200 distinct workflow offerings in the market, each with a distinct conceptual foundation. Anticipating the difficulties that would be experienced by organizations seeking to utilize and integrate distinct workflow offerings, the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC), an industry group formed to advance technology in this area, proposed a standard reference model for workflow technology with an express desire to seek a common platform for achieving workflow interoperation.

Methodology for developing real-time motorway traffic risk identification models using individual-vehicle data

Most of existing motorway traffic safety studies using disaggregate traffic flow data aim at developing models for identifying real-time traffic risks by comparing pre-crash and non-crash conditions. One of serious shortcomings in those studies is that non-crash conditions are arbitrarily selected and hence, not representative, i.e. selected non-crash data might not be the right data comparable with pre-crash data; the non-crash/pre-crash ratio is arbitrarily decided and neglects the abundance of non-crash over pre-crash conditions; etc. Here, we present a methodology for developing a real-time MotorwaY Traffic Risk Identification Model (MyTRIM) using individual vehicle data, meteorological data, and crash data. Non-crash data are clustered into groups called traffic regimes. Thereafter, pre-crash data are classified into regimes to match with relevant non-crash data. Among totally eight traffic regimes obtained, four highly risky regimes were identified; three regime-based Risk Identification Models (RIM) with sufficient pre-crash data were developed. MyTRIM memorizes the latest risk evolution identified by RIM to predict near future risks. Traffic practitioners can decide MyTRIM’s memory size based on the trade-off between detection and false alarm rates. Decreasing the memory size from 5 to 1 precipitates the increase of detection rate from 65.0% to 100.0% and of false alarm rate from 0.21% to 3.68%. Moreover, critical factors in differentiating pre-crash and non-crash conditions are recognized and usable for developing preventive measures. MyTRIM can be used by practitioners in real-time as an independent tool to make online decision or integrated with existing traffic management systems.

Using the Alliance Form for Operation and Maintenance of Privatized Infrastructures

A significant number of privatizations utilized to operate and maintain critical networked infrastructures have failed to meet contractual expectations and the expectations of the community. The author carried out empirical research ex-ploring four urban water systems. This research revealed that of the four forms of privatization the alliance form was particularly suited to the stewardship of an ur-ban water system. The question then is whether these findings from urban water can be generalised to O&M of infrastructure generally. The answer is increasingly important as governments seek financial sustainability through reapplying the contestability strategy and outsource and privatise further services and activities. This paper first examines the issues encountered with O & M privatisations. Second the findings as to the stewardship achieved by the four case study water systems are unpacked with particular focus upon the alliance form. Third the key variables which were found to have distinct causal links to the stewardship-like behaviour of the private participants in the Alliance case study are described. Fourth the variables which may be crucial to the successful application of the alliance form to the broader range of infrastructures are separated out. Fifth this paper then sets the path for research into these crucial features of the alliance form.

Development of gas sensing technology for ground and airborne applications powered by solar energy : methodology and experimental results

Monitoring gases for environmental, industrial and agricultural fields is a demanding task that requires long periods of observation, large quantity of sensors, data management, high temporal and spatial resolution, long term stability, recalibration procedures, computational resources, and energy availability. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are currently representing the best alternative to monitor large, remote, and difficult access areas, as these technologies have the possibility of carrying specialised gas sensing systems, and offer the possibility of geo-located and time stamp samples. However, these technologies are not fully functional for scientific and commercial applications as their development and availability is limited by a number of factors: the cost of sensors required to cover large areas, their stability over long periods, their power consumption, and the weight of the system to be used on small UAVs. Energy availability is a serious challenge when WSN are deployed in remote areas with difficult access to the grid, while small UAVs are limited by the energy in their reservoir tank or batteries. Another important challenge is the management of data produced by the sensor nodes, requiring large amount of resources to be stored, analysed and displayed after long periods of operation. In response to these challenges, this research proposes the following solutions aiming to improve the availability and development of these technologies for gas sensing monitoring: first, the integration of WSNs and UAVs for environmental gas sensing in order to monitor large volumes at ground and aerial levels with a minimum of sensor nodes for an effective 3D monitoring; second, the use of solar energy as a main power source to allow continuous monitoring; and lastly, the creation of a data management platform to store, analyse and share the information with operators and external users. The principal outcomes of this research are the creation of a gas sensing system suitable for monitoring any kind of gas, which has been installed and tested on CH4 and CO2 in a sensor network (WSN) and on a UAV. The use of the same gas sensing system in a WSN and a UAV reduces significantly the complexity and cost of the application as it allows: a) the standardisation of the signal acquisition and data processing, thereby reducing the required computational resources; b) the standardisation of calibration and operational procedures, reducing systematic errors and complexity; c) the reduction of the weight and energy consumption, leading to an improved power management and weight balance in the case of UAVs; d) the simplification of the sensor node architecture, which is easily replicated in all the nodes. I evaluated two different sensor modules by laboratory, bench, and field tests: a non-dispersive infrared module (NDIR) and a metal-oxide resistive nano-sensor module (MOX nano-sensor). The tests revealed advantages and disadvantages of the two modules when used for static nodes at the ground level and mobile nodes on-board a UAV. Commercial NDIR modules for CO2 have been successfully tested and evaluated in the WSN and on board of the UAV. Their advantage is the precision and stability, but their application is limited to a few gases. The advantages of the MOX nano-sensors are the small size, low weight, low power consumption and their sensitivity to a broad range of gases. However, selectivity is still a concern that needs to be addressed with further studies. An electronic board to interface sensors in a large range of resistivity was successfully designed, created and adapted to operate on ground nodes and on-board UAV. The WSN and UAV created were powered with solar energy in order to facilitate outdoor deployment, data collection and continuous monitoring over large and remote volumes. The gas sensing, solar power, transmission and data management systems of the WSN and UAV were fully evaluated by laboratory, bench and field testing. The methodology created to design, developed, integrate and test these systems was extensively described and experimentally validated. The sampling and transmission capabilities of the WSN and UAV were successfully tested in an emulated mission involving the detection and measurement of CO2 concentrations in a field coming from a contaminant source; the data collected during the mission was transmitted in real time to a central node for data analysis and 3D mapping of the target gas. The major outcome of this research is the accomplishment of the first flight mission, never reported before in the literature, of a solar powered UAV equipped with a CO2 sensing system in conjunction with a network of ground sensor nodes for an effective 3D monitoring of the target gas. A data management platform was created using an external internet server, which manages, stores, and shares the data collected in two web pages, showing statistics and static graph images for internal and external users as requested. The system was bench tested with real data produced by the sensor nodes and the architecture of the platform was widely described and illustrated in order to provide guidance and support on how to replicate the system. In conclusion, the overall results of the project provide guidance on how to create a gas sensing system integrating WSNs and UAVs, how to power the system with solar energy and manage the data produced by the sensor nodes. This system can be used in a wide range of outdoor applications, especially in agriculture, bushfires, mining studies, zoology, and botanical studies opening the way to an ubiquitous low cost environmental monitoring, which may help to decrease our carbon footprint and to improve the health of the planet.

Beyond enterprise resource planning projects : Innovative strategies for competitive advantage

ABSTRACT A rapidly changing business environment and legacy IT problems has resulted in many organisations implementing standard package solutions. This 'common systems' approach establishes a common IT and business process infrastructure within organisations and its increasing dominance raises several important strategic issues. These are to what extent do common systems impose common business processes and management systems on competing firms, and what is the source of competitive advantage if the majority of firms employ almost identical information systems and business processes? A theoretical framework based on research into legacy systems and earlier IT strategy literature is used to analyse three case studies in the manufacturing, chemical and IT industries. It is shown that the organisations are treating common systems as the core of their organisations' abilities to manage business transactions. To achieve competitive advantage they are clothing these common systems with information systems designed to capture information about competitors, customers and suppliers, and to provide a basis for sharing knowledge within the organisation and ultimately with economic partners. The importance of these approaches to other organisations and industries is analysed and an attempt is made at outlining the strategic options open to firms beyond the implementation of common business systems.

A case study in flood fatality : Beijing July 2012 flood

Background The aim of this study is to examine the flood fatality with a view to identifying risks which may inform public policy responses to future flood. On July 21st, 2012, Beijing suffered the heaviest rain since 1963. The average rainfall was 215 mm over a 24 hour period in the central city (301mm in Fangshan District). The rain resulted in a flood that caused severe health, social and financial impact. Results This flood caused 79 deaths. Of the 71 deaths for which a specific cause could be identified, 5 were rescue team members, 42 were killed by drowning (11 in the car), and the others by electricity shock, fallen house, falling items and lightning. The total financial cost was estimated to be US$ 1.7 billion. The causations of the deaths inform the risks associated with the flood. Discussion This flood had a catastrophic impact on Beijing, mainly due to the intensity of the rain (the rain was the heaviest in the modern Beijing history; possibly due to global warming and urban heat island effect), the vulnerability of the infrastructure (poor standards of drainage, disorganized water management systems and decreased permeability of the earth as a result of the city’s rapid development), and the capacity of the response system (mainly dependent on the awareness of the citizens, warning systems and the capacity of the emergency rescue). Implication Many risk management measures have been implemented as a result of this flood, including water level warning marks, flood safety education and warnings sent to mobile phones, a project to move about 74,500 farmers away from the flood-prone areas within 5 years. However, further measures targeted at the fundamental issues identified by this analysis are necessary, especially those targeting at health issues. These may include better planning, improved drainage systems and ecological development to increase permeability etc..