The City of Winnipeg, located at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, has over 240 km of natural riverbank property. The increased frequency and magnitude of flooding along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers over the past decade appears to have influenced the number of slope failures along riverbank property, resulting in the loss of both public green space and privately owned land. The loss of private and public property adjacent to the river has led to the loss of valuable real estate and public parkland amenities. To ensure that riverbank property is preserved for future generations, the City of Winnipeg wants to increase the stability of certain reaches of publicly owned riverbank property along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers that are prone to slope movements. Extensive research has been conducted on slope stability problems in the Winnipeg area, but a transparent prioritization procedure for the remediation of riverbank stability problems has not existed. Therefore, a Riverbank Asset Management System (RAMS) was developed for publicly owned riverbank property to prioritize riverbank slope stability problems along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The RAMS provides the City of Winnipeg with a rational approach for determining risk levels for specific reaches of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The calculated risk levels allow the City to develop recommended response levels for slope stability remediation projects in a fiscally responsible manner with minimal personal and political influences. This system permits the City to facilitate timely and periodic reviews of priority sites as riverbank conditions and input parameters change.

There is growing concern in the United States and abroad that changes in climate may have serious adverse impacts on communities and their civil infrastructure systems. In response, governments and agencies have begun to investigate adaptation: actions taken to reduce the vulnerability or increase the resiliency of natural and human systems in light of expected climate change. In the transportation sector, adaptation planning has predominantly pursued risk-based strategies that seek to identify climate impacts, and assess infrastructure vulnerabilities across multiple asset types, in network-level planning. However, given the complexity of the myriad asset types of which engineered civil infrastructure systems are composed, these frameworks may not adequately address the unique concerns of these various individual asset types. This research develops a risk-based framework to assess and prioritize at a network-level the risks of highway culvert assets to the projected impacts of climate change, specifically focusing on increases in extreme precipitation, and the associated potential for flooding. The framework is applied in a series of case studies using culvert management data provided by four state DOTs, and national climate change projection and infrastructure datasets. The framework developed proposes a new characterization of infrastructure climate change risk, based upon the catastrophe model, to address the need for qualitative approaches to risk given the uncertain nature of climate change, and the sometimes sparse inventory and attribute data for various assets. This characterization proposes three “dimensions” of infrastructure climate risk (climate change impact exposure, asset climate impact vulnerability, and asset criticality) to assign culvert asset priorities. The research develops a method to project the geospatial extent and changes in magnitude of extreme precipitation events; it also develops two measures of culvert vulnerability to increased flow conditions based upon data collected in general culvert management activities. This research demonstrates that existing data sources can be reasonably combined in an analytical assessment framework to identify climate change impact risks to highway culvert assets, providing an additional resource to the existing climate change adaptation planning and risk management toolkit in the transportation infrastructure sector, and also laying a foundation for further refinement of these methods. The results of this research demonstrate that existing climate change projection data, when used alongside culvert inventory and attribute data, provides a reasonable means by which to analyze the projected exposure of culvert assets to climate change impacts. This research also demonstrates that existing culvert management data provides a reasonable foundation upon which to assess the relative vulnerability of culverts to increased flow conditions, although additional research is necessary to develop these methods. The structure of the proposed framework provides a viable means by which quantitative climate change projections, asset vulnerability, and asset criticality data can be combined in a mixed-methods approach to qualitatively characterize climate change impact risks to highway culvert assets despite uncertainty in climate change projections and other inputs.

The City of Winnipeg, located at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, has over 240 km of natural riverbank property. The increased frequency and magnitude of flooding along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers over the past decade appears to have influenced the number of slope failures along riverbank property, resulting in the loss of both public green space and privately owned land. The loss of private and public property adjacent to the river has led to the loss of valuable real estate and public parkland amenities. To ensure that riverbank property is preserved for future generations, the City of Winnipeg wants to increase the stability of certain reaches of publicly owned riverbank property along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers that are prone to slope movements. Extensive research has been conducted on slope stability problems in the Winnipeg area, but a transparent prioritization procedure for the remediation of riverbank stability problems has not existed. Therefore, a Riverbank Asset Management System (RAMS) was developed for publicly owned riverbank property to prioritize riverbank slope stability problems along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The RAMS provides the City of Winnipeg with a rational approach for determining risk levels for specific reaches of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. The calculated risk levels allow the City to develop recommended response levels for slope stability remediation projects in a fiscally responsible manner with minimal personal and political influences. This system permits the City to facilitate timely and periodic reviews of priority sites as riverbank conditions and input parameters change.

Traditional Canadian pavement construction contracts provide detailed specifications for the work that needs to be carried out. This is the case for both maintenance and rehabilitation contracts. However, for many road agencies around the world, this traditional way of contracting had shortcomings. These agencies have been proactive in changing their contracts to maintain the road networks while reducing the cost. The challenge of maintaining the road networks to the highest possible condition while investing the minimal amount of money has promoted innovative contracting approaches. Furthermore, road agencies have increased the private sector involvement through warranty contracts. According to road agencies around the world, there has been a movement over the last two decades towards Performance Based Contracts (PBCs); a long term warranty contract. In PBCs, the client agency specifies certain clearly defined minimal performance measures to be met or exceeded during the contract period and payments are explicitly linked to the contractor successfully meeting or exceeding those performance measures. Therefore, the PBC maintenance and rehabilitation selection differs significantly from that of traditional asset management contracts and more complex due to the pavement deterioration process and probability of failure to achieve the specified level of service for various performance measures along the contract period. This thesis involves the development of a novel framework that facilitates the selection of maintenance and rehabilitation activities for pavement assets under PBCs. The framework consists of two phases. Phase-One, called the Initial Program, uses historical data, performance modeling, and optimization to establish and select the maintenance and rehabilitation program for the bidding stage. Phase-Two, called Project Asset Management, is implemented after the contract is awarded. This phase uses the contract performance monitoring data and the cost estimate from Phase-One as a baseline budget to update and validate the established program through performance modeling and optimization. A case study using data from the Ministry of Transportation Ontario (MTO) second generation Pavement Management System (PMS2) is used to illustrate the framework.

Data are the lifeblood of an organisation, being employed by virtually all business functions within a firm. Data management, therefore, is a critical process in prolonging the life of a company and determining the success of each of an organisation’s business functions. The last decade and a half has seen data warehousing rising in priority within corporate data management as it provides an effective supporting platform for decision support tools. A cross-sectional survey conducted by this research showed that data warehousing is starting to be used within organisations for their engineering asset management, however the industry uptake is slow and has much room for development and improvement. This conclusion is also evidenced by the lack of systematic scholarly research within asset management data warehousing as compared to data warehousing for other business areas. This research is motivated by the lack of dedicated research into asset management data warehousing and attempts to provide original contributions to the area, focussing on data modelling. Integration is a fundamental characteristic of a data warehouse and facilitates the analysis of data from multiple sources. While several integration models exist for asset management, these only cover select areas of asset management. This research presents a novel conceptual data warehousing data model that integrates the numerous asset management data areas. The comprehensive ethnographic modelling methodology involved a diverse set of inputs (including data model patterns, standards, information system data models, and business process models) that described asset management data. Used as an integrated data source, the conceptual data model was verified by more than 20 experts in asset management and validated against four case studies. A large section of asset management data are stored in a relational format due to the maturity and pervasiveness of relational database management systems. Data warehousing offers the alternative approach of structuring data in a dimensional format, which suggests increased data retrieval speeds in addition to reducing analysis complexity for end users. To investigate the benefits of moving asset management data from a relational to multidimensional format, this research presents an innovative relational vs. multidimensional model evaluation procedure. To undertake an equitable comparison, the compared multidimensional are derived from an asset management relational model and as such, this research presents an original multidimensional modelling derivation methodology for asset management relational models. Multidimensional models were derived from the relational models in the asset management data exchange standard, MIMOSA OSA-EAI. The multidimensional and relational models were compared through a series of queries. It was discovered that multidimensional schemas reduced the data size and subsequently data insertion time, decreased the complexity of query conceptualisation, and improved the query execution performance across a range of query types. To facilitate the quicker uptake of these data warehouse multidimensional models within organisations, an alternate modelling methodology was investigated. This research presents an innovative approach of using a case-based reasoning methodology for data warehouse schema design. Using unique case representation and indexing techniques, the system also uses a business vocabulary repository to augment case searching and adaptation. The system was validated through a case-study where multidimensional schema design speed and accuracy was measured. It was found that the case-based reasoning system provided a marginal benefit, with a greater benefits gained when confronted with more difficult scenarios.

Engineering asset management (EAM) organisations are increasingly motivated to implement business intelligence (BI) systems in response to dispersed information environments and regulatory requirements. However, the implementation of a BI system is a complex undertaking requiring considerable resources. To date, there has been only a limited authoritative set of critical success factors (CSFs) for management reference because the BI market is a relatively new area that has been driven mainly by IT industry and vendors. There is an imperative to explicitly focus on, and rigorously specify, the CSFs that impact on the implementation of BI systems. Consequently, this research seeks to bridge the gap that exists between academia and practitioners. It addresses the challenging problems in implementing BI systems by investigating the CSFs and their associated contextual issues with EAM organisations.

Across a large part of the UK highways network the carriageway and pavement foundations are drained by Highway Filter Drains (HFDs). A HFD is a linear trench constructed either at the pavement edge or central reserve, fitted with a porous carrier pipe at the base and backfilled with an initially highly porous aggregate material. This arrangement enables the swift removal of surface runoff and subsurface water from the pavement system minimising road user hazards and eliminating risk of structural damage to the pavement sub-base. The highly porous backfill filters throughout its operational life fines washed from the pavement wearing course or adjacent land. HFDs have been found to be prone to collecting near the basal sections (pipe) or surface layers contaminants or detritus that causes the filter media to gradually block. The process has been defined as HFD clogging and it has been found to lead to reduced drainage capacity and potentially severe drop of serviceability. O&M contractual agreements for DBFO projects usually propose in-service and handback requirements for all assets included in the concession portfolio. Different performance thresholds are thus prescribed for pavements, structures, ancillary assets or street lighting. Similar definitions can be retrieved for drainage assets in such agreements, and these include HFDs. Performance metrics are defined though in a generic language and residual life (a key indicator for major assets that usually drives long-term maintenance planning) is prescribed without indicative means to evaluate such a parameter. Most of pavement maintenance is carried out nowadays using proactive management thinking and engineered assessment of benefits and costs of alternative strategies (what-if scenarios). Such a proactive regime is founded upon data driven processes and asset specific ageing / renewal understanding. Within the spectrum of road management, maintenance Life Cycle Costs are usually generated and updated on an annual basis using inventory and condition data linked to a Decision Support Tool (DST). This enables the assessment and optimisation of investment requirements and projection of deterioration and of treatment impacts aligned to continuous monitoring of asset performance. Following this paradigm shift in infrastructure management, a similar structured methodology to optimise HFD maintenance planning is desired and is introduced in this thesis. The work presented enables the identification of proactive maintenance drivers and potential routes in applying a systemised HFD appraisal and monitoring system. An evaluation of Asset Management prerequisites is thus discussed linked to an overview of strategic requirements to establish such a proactive approach. The thesis identifies condition assessment protocols and focuses on developing the means to evaluate deteriorated characteristics of in service drains using destructive and non-destructive techniques. A probabilistic HFD ageing / renewal model is also proposed using Markov chains. This builds upon existing deterioration understanding and links back to current treatment options and impacts. A filter drain decision support toolkit is lastly developed to support maintenance planning and strategy generation.

The primary objective of this dissertation is to assess the impact of regulation on the asset management industry. The secondary aims of the study are to investigate whether the South African asset management industry regulation is aligned towards creating an enabling economic environment, analyse the regulatory regime affecting the asset management industry and provide recommendations regarding the strategies that may be adopted by asset managers, in order to effectively and efficiently comply with existing and new regulations. A quantitative research methodology was adopted. A survey was conducted by means of questionnaire design. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of asset management companies registered with the Financial Services Board. Through empirical research the researcher gained in-depth knowledge regarding the impact of regulation on the asset management industry. There is an appreciation of the economic importance of the asset management industry, as a creator of employment and its effect on the growth and development of the South African economy in general. The regulation of the asset management industry contributes towards an enabling economic environment and development of the industry. The rationale and objectives of regulation of the asset management industry, as it pertains to systematic issues associated with externalities, market imperfections and failures, economies of scale in monitoring, consumer confidence and the consumer demand for regulation, would seem to justify the existence and development of compliance requirements. Regulation must however balance the goals of competition and efficiency versus safety and soundness. The current regulatory universe applicable to the asset management industry is justifiable, beneficial and is achieving the intended objectives. The rapid changes in regulation and costs of regulation of the asset management industry, which entails utilisation of resources such as personnel, time and systems required and limitation on investment freedom and creativity, remain the cause for concern. However based on the outcomes of the research, there is adequate evidence to suggest that the benefits of regulation of the asset management industry outweigh the costs thereof. The outcomes of the research suggest that under the new paradigm, success will be determined by how asset managers can solve several key challenges such as enhancing operational efficiency, complying with the complex and rapidly changing regulatory environment and meeting the changing customer expectations. The new era of compliance will force asset managers to focus on an enterprise-wide integration of business strategy and not simply short-term tactical solutions. For asset managers that effectively meet the challenge of the changing regulatory environment, substantial investments in infrastructure or data architecture and implementation of an enhanced operating model will provide opportunities to enhance profitability and ensure growth. / Economics / M. Com.

This study focuses on the financial management of movable property in the Center of Biological and Health Sciences (CCBS) of the Federal University of Maranhão (UFMA), according to Torres Junior (2003) the wealth management is to plan, organize, control, ensure, conserve and promote the best use of permanent materials available in the organization. This research aims to examine the criteria adopted in the processes of acquisition and disposal of permanent materials. Therefore, we discussed knowledge of the asset management regulations applied to heritage resources, information technology in public administration and sustainable logistics plan. This knowledge is grounded in the views of authors such as Davemport (1994), Moresi (2000), Francischini and Gurgel (2002), Cross (2003), Coutinho (2004), Silva, Ribeiro and Rodrigues (2004), Martins et AL (2007 ), Oliveira (2007), Pozo (2007), Bobsin and Lobler (2008), Carvalho Filho (2008), Gomes and Tortato (2010), Santos (2012), Meirelles (2012), Vinhais, Manso and Silva (2012) , Meza and Fijor (2013), among others. This case study is descriptive, exploratory and qualitative. Two questionnaires were applied to servers with the academic departments of the CCBS and Registration Division Asset respectively, and proceeded the analysis of existing documentation in the archives of the institution on the financial management which enabled the collection of data that were subsequently analyzed. The results show that the studied unit has been unable to efficiently manage its property, not given the precepts both the current legislation, as the organs of internal and external control. In one of the goals are some proposals for improvements, such as preparation of a manual of procedures based on current legislation, promote seminars on asset management. / O presente estudo trata sobre a gestão patrimonial de bens móveis no Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (CCBS) da Universidade Federal do Maranhão (UFMA), segundo Torres Junior (2003) a administração patrimonial consiste em planejar, organizar, controlar, zelar, conservar e promover a melhor utilização dos materiais permanentes disponíveis na organização. A presente pesquisa tem como objetivo principal analisar os critérios adotados nos processos de aquisição e de descarte de materiais permanentes. Para tanto foram discutidos conhecimentos sobre a gestão patrimonial, legislação aplicada aos recursos patrimoniais, a tecnologia de informação na administração pública e o plano de logística sustentável. Esses conhecimentos estão alicerçados nas visões de autores como Davemport (1994), Moresi (2000), Francischini e Gurgel (2002), Cruz (2003), Coutinho (2004), Silva, Ribeiro e Rodrigues (2004), Martins et AL (2007), Oliveira (2007), Pozo (2007), Bobsin e Lobler (2008), Carvalho Filho (2008), Gomes e Tortato (2010), Santos (2012), Meirelles (2012), Vinhais, Manso e Silva (2012), Meza e Fijor (2013), dentre outros. Este estudo de caso é descritivo, exploratório e de natureza qualitativa. Foram aplicados dois questionários junto aos servidores dos departamentos acadêmicos do CCBS e da Divisão de Registro Patrimonial, respectivamente, e procedida a análise da documentação existente nos arquivos da instituição sobre a gestão patrimonial, que possibilitou a coleta de dados que posteriormente foram analisados. Os resultados revelam que a unidade pesquisada não vem conseguindo gerenciar de forma eficiente seus bens móveis, não atendendo ao que preceitua tanto a legislação vigente, quanto os órgãos de controle interno e externo. Em um dos objetivos são apresentadas algumas propostas de melhorias, tais como, elaboração de um manual de procedimentos baseado na legislação vigente, promover seminários sobre a gestão patrimonial.

Nesta dissertação, discute-se o problema de otimização de carteiras de investimento para estratégia passiva de Index Tracking. Os objetivos principais são (i) apresentar um modelo de otimização de Index Tracking e (ii) a solucionar esse modelo com uso do método heurístico de Algoritmos Genéticos (AG) para formação de carteiras com número reduzido de ativos. O índice de referência utilizado é o Ibovespa, para o período de Janeiro/2009 a Julho/2012, com um total de 890 observações diárias de preços. A partir de uma amostra de 67 ativos, são formadas carteiras sem limite de ativos e limitadas a 40, 30, 20, 10 e 05 ativos; os intervalos de rebalanceamento das carteiras são 20, 40 e 60 períodos (dias úteis), ou seja, rebalanceamento mensal, bimestral e trimestral. É verificado que, para essa amostra, não é possível formar carteiras de 20 ou menos ativos via otimização direta com o solver Cplex com menos de 1 hora de processamento e gap abaixo de 5%. Com uso da heurística de Algoritmos Genéticos, são formadas carteiras de 10 e 05 ativos com tempo de processamento em torno de 5 minutos; nesse caso, o gap médio fica abaixo de 10% para ambos os tipos de carteira. E, com tempo de processamento do AG um pouco maior, em torno de 8 minutos, o algoritmo fornece soluções para carteiras de 10 e 05 ativos com gap médio abaixo de 5%. / In this master’s thesis it is discussed the portfolio optimization problem using the passive investment strategy of Index Tracking. The main goals are (i) to present an optimization model for the Index Tracking problem and (ii) to solve this model using the heuristic approach of Genetic Algorithms (GA) to create portfolios with reduced amount of stocks. The benchmark used is the Ibovespa Index (main reference for the Brazilian Stock Market), during the period from January/2009 to July/2012 (using a total of 890 daily stock prices). The sample contains 67 assets, and the model is used to build portfolios without limit in the amount of assets and portfolios limited to 40, 30, 20, 10 and 05 assets; the ranges of time to rebalance the portfolios are 20, 40, and 60 trading days, which means to rebalance monthly, bimonthly and quarterly. The results show that, considering this sample, it is not possible to build portfolios with 20 stocks (or less than 20) through direct optimization using the solver Cplex with computational processing time less than 1 hour and results with gap below 5%. On the other hand, using the Genetic Algorithms heuristic approach, portfolios limited to 10 and 05 stocks are built with computational time close to 5 minutes; for both types of portfolio, the solutions provided by the GA have average gap below 10%. Also, with a computational time slightly bigger, close to 8 minutes, the algorithm provides solutions with average gap below 5% for portfolios limited to 10 and 05 stocks.