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MULTI ACTOR MULTI CRITERIA ANALYSIS (MAMCA) -- 911.10 --- Transport. Traffic

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Governments worldwide face the difficult challenge of deciding which infrastructure projects to prioritize and select for implementation, given the limits of available funding and the need to attain their developmental goals. The key objective of this report is to conduct a comparative exercise between the World Bank's Infrastructure Prioritization Framework, a multicriteria analysis-based methodology to project prioritization, and a more complex cost-benefit analysis-based approach. The report focuses on Chile, which has a well-institutionalized evaluation process that uses cost-benefit analysis to assess projects on their quality and ability to generate value for money. The analysis compares the results of the Infrastructure Prioritization Framework alongside Chile's current cost-benefit analysis-based and multicriteria analysis approaches to the same subsets of projects in the road transport and water reservoir subsectors, respectively. The results show that the Infrastructure Prioritization Framework has application beyond its original proposition and can complement a traditional cost-benefit analysis by directly considering social and environmental policy goals that are otherwise difficult to quantify in a cost-benefit analysis. The analysis also finds that in Chile there is a discrepancy between the stated goals and objectives of the appraisal system and the actual implementation. In the case of transport sector projects, there is an evident deviation between cost-benefit analysis-based selection policy and actual decisions made for project implementation. In the case of water catchment selection, there is a bias toward projects with higher financial-economic performance as compared to social-environmental performance, despite policy intentions to afford consideration to environmental and social development goals.

Hydrology --- Infrastructure Planning --- Infrastructure Prioritization --- Multi-Criteria Analysis --- Poverty Reduction --- Principal Component Analysis --- Public Investment --- Social Development & Poverty --- Transport --- Water --- Water Resources

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Governments must decide how to allocate limited resources for infrastructure development, particularly since financing gaps have been projected for the coming decades. Social cost-benefit analysis provides sound project appraisal and, when systematically applied, a basis for prioritization. In some instances, however, capacity and resource limitations make extensive economic analyses across all projects unfeasible in the immediate term. This paper responds to a need for expanding the available set of tools for project selection by proposing an alternative prioritization approach that is systematic and feasible within the current resource means of government. The Infrastructure Prioritization Framework is a multi-criteria decision support tool that considers project outcomes along two dimensions, social-environmental and financial-economic. When large sets of small- to medium-sized projects are proposed, resources are limited, and basic project appraisal data (but not full social cost-benefit analysis) are available, the Infrastructure Prioritization Framework can inform project selection by combining selection criteria into social-environmental and financial-economic indexes. These indexes are used to plot projects on a Cartesian plane, and the sector budget is imposed to create a project map for comparison along each dimension. The Infrastructure Prioritization Framework is structured to accommodate multiple policy objectives, attend to social and environmental factors, provide an intuitive platform for displaying results, and take advantage of available data while promoting capacity building and data collection for more sophisticated appraisal methods and selection frameworks. Decision criteria, weighting, and sensitivity analysis should be decided and made transparent in advance of selection, and analysis should be made publicly available and open to third-party review.

Banks and Banking Reform --- Communities & Human Settlements --- Decision Support --- Economic Theory & Research --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Housing & Human Habitats --- ICT Policy and Strategies --- Information and Communication Technologies --- Infrastructure --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Multi-Criteria Analysis --- Policy Planning --- Prioritization --- Project Selection --- Transport --- Transport Economics Policy and Planning

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In the modern world, the competitiveness of bioenergy- and/or bioresources-related activities heavily depends on the effectiveness of supply chain management. A large number of multidisciplinary topics are involved in the bioresources and bioenergy production fields. Although the technical issues that are related with the topic are well-discussed and do not represent major barriers, supply chain management issues, such as design of the network, collection, storage or transportation of bioresources, are still considered as fundamental questions that need to be answered to enable the optimal exploitation of bioenergy and bioresources. Moreover, modeling of material and energy flows; identification of the dynamic character of the supply chains; available reverse logistics (waste management) alternatives; economic, social and environmental sustainability of bioresource supply chains; novelty in the applied business models; and decision support frameworks towards efficient supply chain management for bioenergy and bioresources present critical operational sustainability issues and business-making potential. This Special Issue, entitled “Supply Chain Management for Bioenergy and Bioresources”, seeks to contribute to the bioenergy and bioresources agenda through enhanced scientific and multi-disciplinary knowledge that may boost the performance efficiency of supply chain management and support the decision-making process of stakeholders. To that end, the Special Issue includes one extensive review on yellow and woody biomass supply-chain management, together with six original papers which span a number of innovative, multifaceted, technical developments that are related to all different echelons of supply chain management for bioenergy and bioresources.

Research & information: general --- Biology, life sciences --- Technology, engineering, agriculture --- supply-chain design --- strategic planning --- operational planning --- energy crop production --- crop residue --- dry above ground biomass --- soybean --- empirical models --- bilinear regression analysis --- agricultural operations --- energy use --- assessment tool --- workability --- machinery --- agricultural machinery --- fleet management --- auto-steering system --- collaborative operating system --- flow-shop --- simulation --- field experiment --- Fuzzy Cognitive Maps --- photovoltaic solar energy --- scenario analysis --- decision-support --- energy management --- bioenergy --- efficiency of bio-resources --- decision support system --- multi-criteria analysis --- sustainability --- neuro-fuzzy --- ANFIS --- neural networks --- soft computing --- fuzzy cognitive maps --- energy forecasting --- natural gas --- prediction

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Coal mining continues to make advances, especially in the areas of safety and environmental protection as a result of mining. This book contains nine peer-reviewed articles on green coal mining that address most of the important issues associated with improving coal mining. These issues include the protection of water above coal mines, both surface and ground water, and the subsidence that occurs during and after mining with methods to limit it and methods of rehabilitation. Additional issues include mine entry and production area support and methods to control gas emissions.

decision making --- management --- mines --- multi-criteria analysis --- project --- risk --- restoration --- coal gangue --- geopolymer --- mechanical activation --- thermal activation --- mechanical property --- microstructure --- water protection --- water-conservation coal mining (WCCM) --- influencing factors --- “five maps --- three zones --- and two zoning plans” --- water conductive fractured zone (WCFZ) --- acoustic emission (AE) --- coal --- deep mining --- mining layouts --- lignite --- reclamation --- rehabilitation --- land use --- decision-making --- optimisation --- sustainability --- longwall coal mining --- ground control --- subsidence --- uplift --- surface movement --- radar-interferometry --- long-term behavior --- sustainable mining --- Belgium --- foamed concrete --- orthogonal experiment --- optimum mix --- coal mine goaf --- gas isolation --- longwall mining --- weak geological condition --- gate-entry stability --- remaining coal thickness --- wooden cribs --- gangue --- load-displacement characteristics --- pressure-compressibility characteristics