Value-mapping for major economic infrastructure projects

The establishment of corporate objectives regarding economic, environmental, social, and ethical responsibilities, to inform business practice, has been gaining credibility in the business sector since the early 1990’s. This is witnessed through (i) the formation of international forums for sustainable and accountable development, (ii) the emergence of standards, systems, and frameworks to provide common ground for regulatory and corporate dialogue, and (iii) the significant quantum of relevant popular and academic literature in a diverse range of disciplines. How then has this move towards greater corporate responsibility become evident in the provision of major urban infrastructure projects? The gap identified, in both academic literature and industry practice, is a structured and auditable link between corporate intent and project outcomes. Limited literature has been discovered which makes a link between corporate responsibility; project performance indicators (or critical success factors) and major infrastructure provision. This search revealed that a comprehensive mapping framework, from an organisation’s corporate objectives through to intended, anticipated and actual outcomes and impacts has not yet been developed for the delivery of such projects. The research problem thus explored is ‘the need to better identify, map and account for the outcomes, impacts and risks associated with economic, environmental, social and ethical outcomes and impacts which arise from major economic infrastructure projects, both now, and into the future’. The methodology being used to undertake this research is based on Checkland’s soft system methodology, engaging in action research on three collaborative case studies. A key outcome of this research is a value-mapping framework applicable to Australian public sector agencies. This is a decision-making methodology which will enable project teams responsible for delivering major projects, to better identify and align project objectives and impacts with stated corporate objectives.

The creative sector in New Zealand : mapping and economic role : report to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise

The New Zealand creative sector was responsible for almost 121,000 jobs at the time of the 2006 Census (6.3% of total employment). These are divided between • 35,751 creative specialists – persons employed doing creative work in creative industries • 42,300 support workers - persons providing management and support services in creative industries • 42,792 embedded creative workers – persons engaged in creative work in other types of enterprise The most striking feature of this breakdown is the fact that the largest group of creative workers are employed outside the creative industries, i.e. in other types of businesses. Even within the creative industries, there are fewer people directly engaged in creative work than in providing management and support. Creative sector employees earned incomes of approximately $52,000 per annum at the time of the 2006 Census. This is relatively uniform across all three types of creative worker, and is significantly above the average for all employed persons (of approximately $40,700). Creative employment and incomes were growing strongly over both five year periods between the 1996, 2001 and 2006 Censuses. However, when we compare creative and general trends, we see two distinct phases in the development of the creative sector: • rapid structural growth over the five years to 2001 (especially led by developments in ICT), with creative employment and incomes increasing rapidly at a time when they were growing modestly across the whole economy; • subsequent consolidation, with growth driven by more by national economic expansion than structural change, and creative employment and incomes moving in parallel with strong economy-wide growth. Other important trends revealed by the data are that • the strongest growth during the decade was in embedded creative workers, especially over the first five years. The weakest growth was in creative specialists, with support workers in creative industries in the middle rank, • by far the strongest growth in creative industries’ employment was in Software & digital content, which trebled in size over the decade Comparing New Zealand with the United Kingdom and Australia, the two southern hemisphere nations have significantly lower proportions of total employment in the creative sector (both in creative industries and embedded employment). New Zealand’s and Australia’s creative shares in 2001 were similar (5.4% each), but in the following five years, our share has expanded (to 5.7%) whereas Australia’s fell slightly (to 5.2%) – in both cases, through changes in creative industries’ employment. The creative industries generated $10.5 billion in total gross output in the March 2006 year. Resulting from this was value added totalling $5.1b, representing 3.3% of New Zealand’s total GDP. Overall, value added in the creative industries represents 49% of industry gross output, which is higher than the average across the whole economy, 45%. This is a reflection of the relatively high labour intensity and high earnings of the creative industries. Industries which have an above-average ratio of value added to gross output are usually labour-intensive, especially when wages and salaries are above average. This is true for Software & Digital Content and Architecture, Design & Visual Arts, with ratios of 60.4% and 55.2% respectively. However there is significant variation in this ratio between different parts of the creative industries, with some parts (e.g. Software & Digital Content and Architecture, Design & Visual Arts) generating even higher value added relative to output, and others (e.g. TV & Radio, Publishing and Music & Performing Arts) less, because of high capital intensity and import content. When we take into account the impact of the creative industries’ demand for goods and services from its suppliers and consumption spending from incomes earned, we estimate that there is an addition to economic activity of: • $30.9 billion in gross output, $41.4b in total • $15.1b in value added, $20.3b in total • 158,100 people employed, 234,600 in total The total economic impact of the creative industries is approximately four times their direct output and value added, and three times their direct employment. Their effect on output and value added is roughly in line with the average over all industries, although the effect on employment is significantly lower. This is because of the relatively high labour intensity (and high earnings) of the creative industries, which generate below-average demand from suppliers, but normal levels of demand though expenditure from incomes. Drawing on these numbers and conclusions, we suggest some (slightly speculative) directions for future research. The goal is to better understand the contribution the creative sector makes to productivity growth; in particular, the distinctive contributions from creative firms and embedded creative workers. The ideas for future research can be organised into the several categories: • Understanding the categories of the creative sector– who is doing the business? In other words, examine via more fine grained research (at a firm level perhaps) just what is the creative contribution from the different aspects of the creative sector industries. It may be possible to categorise these in terms of more or less striking innovations. • Investigate the relationship between the characteristics and the performance of the various creative industries/ sectors; • Look more closely at innovation at an industry level e.g. using an index of relative growth of exports, and see if this can be related to intensity of use of creative inputs; • Undertake case studies of the creative sector; • Undertake case studies of the embedded contribution to growth in the firms and industries that employ them, by examining taking several high performing noncreative industries (in the same way as proposed for the creative sector). • Look at the aggregates – drawing on the broad picture of the extent of the numbers of creative workers embedded within the different industries, consider the extent to which these might explain aspects of the industries’ varied performance in terms of exports, growth and so on. • This might be able to extended to examine issues like the type of creative workers that are most effective when embedded, or test the hypothesis that each industry has its own particular requirements for embedded creative workers that overwhelms any generic contributions from say design, or IT.

Regional performance : mapping "The North"

Paul Makeham’s work in AusStage Phase 3 has centred on regional mapping of live performance activity. A pilot mapping project was developed to identify regional clusters of performance as well as key regional organisations. In designing this pilot project, reference was made to two other ARC-funded projects. The first of these was Talking Theatre, an audience development research initiative for Queensland and the Northern Territory supported by an ARC Projects-Linkage grant. Talking Theatre was funded between 2004 and 2006 as a Linkage between the ARC, NARPACA (the Northern Australian Regional Performing Arts Centres Association), Arts Queensland, Arts Northern Territory, and QUT. The second project was the Creative Digital Industries National Mapping Project, operating through QUT’s Centre for Excellence in the Creative Industries (CCi). The NMP is designed to develop and publish a range of accurate and timely measures of the Creative Digital Industries in Australia.

Mapping equity and diversity : from counting to culture change

This paper investigates the links between various approaches to managing equity and diversity and their effectiveness in changing the measures of inclusivity of women in organisations as a means of auditing and mapping managing diversity outcomes in Australia. The authors argue that managing diversity is more than changing systems and counting numbers it is also about managing the substantive culture change required in order to achieve inclusivity particularly intercultural inclusivity. Research in one sector of the education industry that investigated the competency skills required for culture change is offered as a model or guide for understanding and reflecting upon intercultural competency and its sequential development.

Using concept mapping to scaffold learning for students who experience learning difficulties in science classes

In order to develop scientific literacy students need the cognitive tools that enable them to read and evaluate science texts. One cognitive tool that has been widely used in science education to aid the development of conceptual understanding is concept mapping. However, it has been found some students experience difficulty with concept map construction. This study reports on the development and evaluation of an instructional sequence that was used to scaffold the concept-mapping process when middle school students who were experiencing difficulty with science learning used concept mapping to summarise a chapter of a science text. In this study individual differences in working memory functioning are suggested as one reason that students experience difficulty with concept map construction. The study was conducted using a design-based research methodology in the school’s learning support centre. The analysis of student work samples collected during the two-year study identified some of the difficulties and benefits associated with the use of scaffolded concept mapping with these students. The observations made during this study highlight the difficulty that some students experience with the use of concept mapping as a means of developing an understanding of science concepts and the amount of instructional support that is required for such understanding to develop. Specifically, the findings of the study support the use of multi-component, multi-modal instructional techniques to facilitate the development of conceptual understanding with students who experience difficulty with science learning. In addition, the important roles of interactive dialogue and metacognition in the development of conceptual understanding are identified.

Value-mapping inputs

This research aims to increase understanding of and delivery to qualitative (or intangible) outcomes and impacts of major economic infrastructure projects (i.e. bridges, roads, water infrastructure and the like), and the role of stakeholder engagement in this process.-------- Recent doctoral research completed at the Queensland University of Technology by the author investigated how the principles of corporate responsibility are applied in the construction sector. This related specifically to major economic infrastructure projects (hereafter referred to as major projects), with particular regard to urban transportation projects. One outcome of this past research was a value-mapping framework which enables organisations to track project outcomes to pre-existing corporate objectives, and report on these throughout the project life-cycle. Two recommendations for future research from that work formed the basis for this current research: • How can qualitative measurables be better integrated into decision-making on major economic infrastructure projects? • How can non-contractual stakeholders be more effectively engaged with on these projects? The link between these two areas may relate to the stakeholders’ role in qualitative indicator identification and measurement. This is a key point for future investigation.---------- The aim of this research is thus to further investigate these two areas, with the intent of (i) better defining the research direction; (ii) identifying potential research partners; and (iii) identify possible sources of future funding.

Mapping a suburb with a single camera using a biologically inspired SLAM system

This paper describes a biologically inspired approach to vision-only simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) on ground-based platforms. The core SLAM system, dubbed RatSLAM, is based on computational models of the rodent hippocampus, and is coupled with a lightweight vision system that provides odometry and appearance information. RatSLAM builds a map in an online manner, driving loop closure and relocalization through sequences of familiar visual scenes. Visual ambiguity is managed by maintaining multiple competing vehicle pose estimates, while cumulative errors in odometry are corrected after loop closure by a map correction algorithm. We demonstrate the mapping performance of the system on a 66 km car journey through a complex suburban road network. Using only a web camera operating at 10 Hz, RatSLAM generates a coherent map of the entire environment at real-time speed, correctly closing more than 51 loops of up to 5 km in length.

Persistent navigation and mapping using a biologically inspired SLAM system

The challenge of persistent navigation and mapping is to develop an autonomous robot system that can simultaneously localize, map and navigate over the lifetime of the robot with little or no human intervention. Most solutions to the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) problem aim to produce highly accurate maps of areas that are assumed to be static. In contrast, solutions for persistent navigation and mapping must produce reliable goal-directed navigation outcomes in an environment that is assumed to be in constant flux. We investigate the persistent navigation and mapping problem in the context of an autonomous robot that performs mock deliveries in a working office environment over a two-week period. The solution was based on the biologically inspired visual SLAM system, RatSLAM. RatSLAM performed SLAM continuously while interacting with global and local navigation systems, and a task selection module that selected between exploration, delivery, and recharging modes. The robot performed 1,143 delivery tasks to 11 different locations with only one delivery failure (from which it recovered), traveled a total distance of more than 40 km over 37 hours of active operation, and recharged autonomously a total of 23 times.

Hippocampal models for simultaneous localisation and mapping on an autonomous robot

To navigate successfully in a novel environment a robot needs to be able to Simultaneously Localize And Map (SLAM) its surroundings. The most successful solutions to this problem so far have involved probabilistic algorithms, but there has been much promising work involving systems based on the workings of part of the rodent brain known as the hippocampus. In this paper we present a biologically plausible system called RatSLAM that uses competitive attractor networks to carry out SLAM in a probabilistic manner. The system can effectively perform parameter self-calibration and SLAM in one dimension. Tests in two dimensional environments revealed the inability of the RatSLAM system to maintain multiple pose hypotheses in the face of ambiguous visual input. These results support recent rat experimentation that suggest current competitive attractor models are not a complete solution to the hippocampal modelling problem.

Simultaneous localisation and mapping from natural landmarks using RatSLAM

This paper describes the current state of RatSLAM, a Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) system based on models of the rodent hippocampus. RatSLAM uses a competitive attractor network to fuse visual and odometry information. Energy packets in the network represent pose hypotheses, which are updated by odometry and can be enhanced or inhibited by visual input. This paper shows the effectiveness of the system in real robot tests in unmodified indoor environments using a learning vision system. Results are shown for two test environments; a large corridor loop and the complete floor of an office building.

Experience mapping : producing spatially continuous environment representations using RatSLAM

RatSLAM is a system for vision-based Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (SLAM) inspired by models of the rodent hippocampus. The system can produce stable representations of large complex environments during robot experiments in both indoor and outdoor environments. These representations are both topological and metric in nature, and can involve multiple representations of the same place as well as discontinuities. In this paper we describe a new technique known as experience mapping that can be used online with the RatSLAM system to produce world representations known as experience maps. These maps group together multiple place representations and are spatially continuous. A number of experiments have been conducted in simulation and a real world office environment. These experiments demonstrate the high degree to which experience maps are representative of the spatial arrangement of the environment.

Biologically inspired visual landmark processing for simultaneous localization and mapping

This paper illustrates a method for finding useful visual landmarks for performing simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). The method is based loosely on biological principles, using layers of filtering and pooling to create learned templates that correspond to different views of the environment. Rather than using a set of landmarks and reporting range and bearing to the landmark, this system maps views to poses. The challenge is to produce a system that produces the same view for small changes in robot pose, but provides different views for larger changes in pose. The method has been developed to interface with the RatSLAM system, a biologically inspired method of SLAM. The paper describes the method of learning and recalling visual landmarks in detail, and shows the performance of the visual system in real robot tests.