Can the European low-cost airline boom continue? Implications for regional airports

At a time when the traditional major airlines have struggled to remain viable, the low-cost carriers have become the major success story of the European airline industry. This paper looks behind the headlines to show that although low-cost airlines have achieved much, they too have potential weaknesses and face a number of challenges in the years ahead. The secondary and regional airports that have benefited from low-cost carrier expansion are shown to be vulnerable to future changes in airline economics, government policy and patterns of air service. An analysis of routes from London demonstrates that the low-cost airlines have been more successful in some markets than others. To attractive and historically under-served leisure destinations in Southern Europe they have stimulated dramatic growth and achieved a dominant position. To major hub cities however they typically remain marginal players and to secondary points in Northern Europe their traffic has been largely diverted from existing operators. There is also evidence that the UK market is becoming saturated and new low-cost services are poaching traffic from other low-cost routes. Passenger compensation legislation and possible environmental taxes will hit the low-cost airline industry disproportionately hard. The high elasticities of demand to price in certain markets that these airlines have exploited will operate in reverse. One of the major elements of the low-cost business model involves the use of smaller uncongested airports. These offer faster turn-arounds and lower airport charges. In many cases, local and regional government has been willing to subsidise expansion of air services to assist with economic development or tourism objectives. However, recent court cases against Ryanair now threaten these financial arrangements. The paper also examines the catchment areas for airports with low-cost service. It is shown that as well as stimulating local demand, much traffic is captured from larger markets nearby through the differential in fare levels. This has implications for surface transport, as access to these regional airports often involves long journeys by private car. Consideration is then given to the feasibility of low-cost airlines expanding into the long-haul market or to regional operations with small aircraft. Many of the cost advantages are more muted on intercontinental services.

Dynamic cost indexing

This paper describes the development of a generic tool for dynamic cost indexing (DCI), which encompasses the ability to manage flight delay costs on a dynamic basis, trading accelerated fuel burn against ‘cost of time’. Many airlines have significant barriers to identifying which costs should be included in ‘cost of time’ calculations and how to quantify them. The need is highlighted to integrate historical passenger delay and policy data with real-time passenger connections data. The absence of industry standards for defining and interfacing necessary tools is recognised. Delay recovery decision windows and ATC cooperation are key constraints. DCI tools could also be used in the pre-departure phase, and may offer environmental decision support functionality: which could be used as a differentiating technology required for access to designated, future ‘green’ airspace. Short-term opportunities for saving fuel and/or reducing emissions are also identified.

Dynamic cost indexing: cost estimations and building the prototype

The design of a decision-support prototype tool for managing flight delay costs in the pre-departure and airborne phases of a flight is described. The tool trades accelerated fuel burn and emissions charges against 'cost of time'. Costs for all major 'cost of time' components, by three cost scenarios, twelve aircraft types and by magnitude of delay are derived. Short-term opportunities for saving fuel and/or reducing environmental impacts are identified. A shift in ATM from managing delay minutes to delay cost is also supported.

Site level cost benefit analysis of renewable energy in the near-shore environment

Senior thesis written for Oceanography 445

Does Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Have a Role in US Managed Care Drug Formularies? An Empirical Study of Utilization, Costs, Outcomes, and Elasticity of Demand of a Value-Based Formulary

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2015

Evaluation and Potential Cost-Effectiveness of Active Surveillance Pharmacovigilance for First-Line HAART in Namibia

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-02

Construction studies in higher education and the use of digital technology

The construction industry wants graduate employees skilled in relationship building and information technology and communications (ITC). Much of the relationship building at universities has evolved through technology. Government and the ITC industry fund lobby groups to influence both educational establishments and Government to incorporate more ITC in education _ and ultimately into the construction industry. This influencing ignores the technoskeptics’ concerns about student disengagement through excessive online distractions. Construction studies students (n=64) and lecturers (n=16) at a construction university were surveyed to discover the impact of the use and applications of ITC. Contrary to Government and industry technopositivism, construction students and lecturers preferred hard copy documents to online feedback for assignments and marking, more human interface and less technological substitution and to be on campus for lectures and face-to-face meetings rather than viewing on-screen. ITC also distracted users from tasks which, in the case of students, prevented the development of the concentration and deep thinking which a university education should deliver. The research findings are contrary to the promotions of Government, ITC industry and ITC departments and have implications for construction employers where a renewed focus on human communication should mean less stress, fewer delays and cost overruns.

Marginal Activity Access Cost (MAAC): a new indicator for sustainable Land Use/Transport (LUT) planning

The paper presents the ‘Marginal Activity Access Cost’, an accessibility indicator providing estimation in monetary terms of the impacts on mobility and on the environment of locating a single new activity in a specific zone of the urban area. In the first part of this paper, the new indicator is presented and compared to other accessibility indicators proposed in literature. In the second part, the MAAC is validated through an application to the urban area of Rome. The paper concludes with brief remarks on using the proposed accessibility indicator as index of performance for sustainable spatial planning.

Cost dependent strategy for electricity markets bidding based on adaptive reinforcement learning

Electricity markets are complex environments, involving a large number of different entities, playing in a dynamic scene to obtain the best advantages and profits. MASCEM is a multi-agent electricity market simulator to model market players and simulate their operation in the market. Market players are entities with specific characteristics and objectives, making their decisions and interacting with other players. MASCEM provides several dynamic strategies for agents’ behavior. This paper presents a method that aims to provide market players with strategic bidding capabilities, allowing them to obtain the higher possible gains out of the market. This method uses a reinforcement learning algorithm to learn from experience how to choose the best from a set of possible bids. These bids are defined accordingly to the cost function that each producer presents.

Transmission cost allocation using cooperative game theory: a comparative study

In this paper is presented a Game Theory based methodology to allocate transmission costs, considering cooperation and competition between producers. As original contribution, it finds the degree of participation on the additional costs according to the demand behavior. A comparative study was carried out between the obtained results using Nucleolus balance and Shapley Value, with other techniques such as Averages Allocation method and the Generalized Generation Distribution Factors method (GGDF). As example, a six nodes network was used for the simulations. The results demonstrate the ability to find adequate solutions on open access environment to the networks.

Dgenco market balancing - cost repartition under light regulation markets

In this paper we present a new methodology, based in game theory, to obtain the market balancing between Distribution Generation Companies (DGENCO), in liberalized electricity markets. The new contribution of this methodology is the verification of the participation rate of each agent based in Nucléolo Balancing and in Shapley Value. To validate the results we use the Zaragoza Distribution Network with 42 Bus and 5 DGENCO.

A lightweight indoor localization model based on motley-keenan and COST

This paper presents a novel approach to WLAN propagation models for use in indoor localization. The major goal of this work is to eliminate the need for in situ data collection to generate the Fingerprinting map, instead, it is generated by using analytical propagation models such as: COST Multi-Wall, COST 231 average wall and Motley- Keenan. As Location Estimation Algorithms kNN (K-Nearest Neighbour) and WkNN (Weighted K-Nearest Neighbour) were used to determine the accuracy of the proposed technique. This work is based on analytical and measurement tools to determine which path loss propagation models are better for location estimation applications, based on Receive Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI).This study presents different proposals for choosing the most appropriate values for the models parameters, like obstacles attenuation and coefficients. Some adjustments to these models, particularly to Motley-Keenan, considering the thickness of walls, are proposed. The best found solution is based on the adjusted Motley-Keenan and COST models that allows to obtain the propagation loss estimation for several environments.Results obtained from two testing scenarios showed the reliability of the adjustments, providing smaller errors in the measured values values in comparison with the predicted values.

On international cost-sharing of pharmaceutical R&D

Ramsey pricing has been proposed in the pharmaceutical industry as a principle to price discriminate among markets while allowing to recover the (fixed) R&D cost. However, such analyses neglect the presence of insurance or the fund raising costs for most of drug reimbursement. By incorporating these new elements, we aim at providing some building blocks towards an economic theory incorporating Ramsey pricing and insurance coverage. We show how coinsurance affects the optimal prices to pay for the R&D investment. We also show that under certain conditions, there is no strategic incentive by governments to set coinsurance rates in order to shift the financial burden of R&D. This will have important implications to the application of Ramsey pricing principles to pharmaceutical products across countries.