Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Electric demand charge is a large portion (usually 40%) of electric bill in residential, commercial, and manufacturing sectors. This charge is based on the greatest of all demands that have occurred during a month recorded by utility provider for an end-user. During the past several years, electric demand forecasting have been broadly studied by utilities on account of the fact that it has a crucial impact on planning resources to provide consumers reliable power at all time; on the other hand, not many studies have been conducted on consumer side. In this thesis, a novel Maximum Daily Demand (MDD) forecasting method, called Adaptive-Rate-of-Change (ARC), is proposed by analysing real-time demand trend data and incorporating moving average calculations as well as rate of change formularization to develop a forecasting tool which can be applied on either utility or consumer sides. ARC algorithm is implemented on two different real case studies to develop very short-term load forecasting (VSTLF), short-term load forecasting (STLF), and medium-term load forecasting (MTLF). The Chi-square test is used to validate the forecasting results. The results of the test reveal that the ARC algorithm is 84% successful in forecasting maximum daily demands in a period of 72 days with the P-value equals to 0.0301. Demand charge is also estimated to be saved by $8,056 (345.6 kW) for the first year for case study I (a die casting company) by using ARC algorithm. Following that, a new Maximum Demand Management (MDM) method is proposed to provide electric consumers a complete package. The proposed MDM method broadens the electric consumer understanding of how MDD is sensitive to the temperature, production, occupancy, and different sub-systems. The MDM method are applied on two different real case studies to calculate sensitivities by using linear regression models. In all linear regression models, R-squareds calculated as 0.9037, 0.8987, and 0.8197 which indicate very good fits between fitted values and observed values. The results of proposed demand forecasting and management methods can be very helpful and beneficial in decision making for demand management and demand response program.

Yes / Measures to manage demand include implicit and explicit messages about domestic water-users which have important potential impacts on their perceptions and practices. Drawing on recent literature, this paper identifies three different ¿dimensions¿ along which demand management measures¿ constructions of the water-user may vary: these relate to whether the water user is passive or active, whether they are motivated by individual or common needs, and whether they perceive water as a right or a commodity. Demand management measures currently used in England and Wales are then discussed and analysed. The paper concludes by highlighting the importance of communications associated with demand management, and in particular, notes the need to consider the cumulative impact of messages and their interactions with people¿s existing understandings.

No description available.

Evacuation planning is an important disaster management tool. A large-scale evacuation of a region by automobile is a difficult task, especially as demand is often greater than supply. This is made more difficult as the imbalance of supply and demand actually reduces supply due to congestion. Currently, most of the emphasis in evacuation planning is on supply management. The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce and study sophisticated demand management tools, specifically, staging and routing of evacuees. These tools can be used to produce evacuation strategies that reduce or eliminate congestion. A strategic planning model is introduced that accounts for evacuation dynamics and the non-linearities in travel times associated with congestion, yet is tractable and can be applied to large-scale networks. Objective functions of potential interest in evacuation planning are introduced and studied in the context of this model. Insights into the use of staging and routing in evacuation management are delineated and solution techniques are developed. Two different strategic approaches are studied in the context of this model. The first strategic approach is to control the evacuation at a disaggregate level, where customized staging and routing plans are produced for each individual or family unit. The second strategic approach is to control the evacuation at a more aggregate level, where evacuation plans are developed for a larger group of evacuees, based on pre-defined geographic areas. In both approaches, shelter requirements and preferences can also be considered. Computational experience using these two strategic approaches, and their respective solution techniques, is provided using a real network pertaining to Virginia Beach, Virginia, in order to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed methodologies. / Ph. D.

The financial and environmental effects of traffic congestion and automobile-centric air pollution continue to be problems that must be addressed within the United States. In response, travel demand management (TDM) has emerged as a potential way to reduce automobile-based travel in order to minimize these effects. TDM strategies are highly dependent on specific urban form characteristics such as bicycle lanes, sidewalks, or transit facilities. A current gap exists in the analytical tools available to transportation planners when evaluating TDM projects. The standard transportation models do not take into account urban form characteristics in a systematic way. These characteristics play an import role in an individual's selection of walking, bicycling, or transit based travel modes. This gap needs to be filled in order to evaluate TDM projects with the same decision-making rigor that is applied to road expansion projects. The purpose of this project is to develop an enhanced transportation mode choice model that presents a systematic approach for incorporating urban form characteristics. This approach determines which elements of urban form have the strongest influence on transportation mode choice behavior. This work is being done in conjunction with the Roanoke Valley Allegheny Metropolitan Planning Organization as a way to evaluate the potential of TDM projects in promoting non-automobile forms of travel within the Roanoke region. This approach to developing an enhanced transportation mode choice model is a step forward in address the gap between TDM strategies and the tools needed to evaluate them. / Master of Urban and Regional Planning

The basic design concept of most advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) is to present generic information to travelers, leaving travelers to react to the information in their own way. This passive way of managing traffic by providing generic traffic information makes it difficult to predict the outcome and may even incur an adverse effect, such as overreaction (also referred to as the herding effect). Active traffic and demand management (ATDM) is another approach that has received continual attention from both academic research and real-world practice, aiming to effectively influence people's travel demand, provide more travel options, coordinate between travelers, and reduce the need for travel. The research discussed in this article deals with how to provide users with a travel option that aims to minimize the marginal system impact that results from this routing. The goal of this research is to take better advantage of the available real-time traffic information provided by ATIS, to further improve the system level traffic condition from User Equilibrium (UE), or a real-world traffic system that is worse than UE, toward System Optimal (SO), and avoid passively managing traffic. A behaviorally induced, system optimal travel demand management model is presented to achieve this goal through incremental routing. Both analytical derivation and numerical analysis have been conducted on Tucson network in Arizona, as well as on the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) network in Austin, TX. The outcomes of both studies show that our proposed modeling framework is promising for improving network traffic conditions toward SO, and results in substantial economic savings.

M. Tech. Civil Engineering / South Africa is categorized as a water stressed country and it is forecasted to experience physical water scarcity by the year 2025 with a yearly water availability of less than 1000m3 per capita. Continuous pollution of the available water resources from the sources, and the high population growth and its attributes will increase pressure on the available resources and probably resulting in increased conflicts over allocations and more stress resulting in water scarcity. The overall aim of the study was to develop tools and strategies for Water Demand Management in Mabopane, Garankuwa and Winterveldt, which are the areas supplied by Sandspruit Works Association.

This thesis is divided into two parts. Part I deals with demand management. For goods with no substitutes, under supply constraints, fairness considerations introduce negative externalities and lead to a market failure. One example of such a good with no substitutes is water. In case of a market failure, it is necessary to design coordination mechanisms called contracts which provide the right incentives for coordination. As “repetition can yield coordination”, the aim in this part is to design price based dynamic demand management contracts which, under supply constraints, mitigate the market failure. In these contracts, we consider complete information settings; and use the status quo proposition as a fairness criterion for designing them. The contracts are designed as almost noncooperative dynamic games, within the agency theory framework, where the agent (the consumer) is induced to consume at a specified consumption level based on the incentive mechanism offered by the principal (the producer). These contracts use the solution concept of sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) to compute the price (mal-incentive) that acts as a credible threat for deviation from the specified consumption level. In these contracts, unlike the dynamic contracts with asymmetric information, the penalty for deviation is proportional to the amount of deviation. First, we consider a two-period demand management contract for a single consumer satisfying the status quo proposition. Under the assumption that the gain to the consumer and the loss to the producer by deviation is small, the contract is shown to be economically efficient. It is shown that, in the finite horizon, a fair demand management contract cannot be efficient. The demand management contract is homeomorphic to finite horizon alternating bargaining model. In the finite horizon alternating bargaining model, there is a unique SPNE, in which the player who offers last is always at an advantageous position. In the two-period contract, the assumption considered attenuates the last mover advantage and leads to the efficiency. We have shown that one possible way to achieve efficiency, without the assumption, is to make the agents uncertain about the period of interaction. This possibility can be included in an infinite horizon contract. Hence, next, we design an infinite horizon contract for a single consumer. It is proved that this contract is economically efficient and provides revenue sufficiency. The sensitivity analysis of the contract shows that the discounting rate measures the aversion to conservation characteristics of the consumer. The analysis of the contract shows that a sufficiently time-patient consumer is not penalized for the deviation, as the consumer himself is aware of conservation requirements. This result is similar to the results for the present-biased preferences in behavioral economics. Lastly, the infinite horizon contract is extended to two consumers case which internalizes the externality a consumer causes to another. In the two consumer case, consumers are strategically noninteracting; and it is shown that the producer acts as a budget balancer. These contracts are also shown to be economically efficient. The demand management contracts achieve both the procedural and end-state fairness. Also, the infinite horizon contracts are homeomorphic to infinite horizon alternating bargaining model. The efficiency of infinite horizon contracts is due to their homeomorphism with the alternating bargaining process as they exhaust all possible mutual gains from exchange. In the two-period model, the bargaining process is constrained and hence all possible mutual gains are not eliminated, leading to the inefficiency. In part II of the thesis, we discuss the notions of exchangeability in the Shapley value. The Shapley value is a probabilistic value for the transferable utility (TU) cooperative games, in which each player subjectively assigns probabilities to the events which define their positions in the game. In this part, the objective have been to explore the aspect of subjective probability which leads to the uniqueness of the Shapley value. This aspect of subjective probability is known as exchangeability. We derive the Shapley value using de Finetti’s theorem. We also show that, in the Shapley value, each player’s prospects of joining a t-player game as the last member of the game is a moment sequence of the uniquely determined uniform distribution. We stress on finite exchangeability; and deduce that, with finite exchangeability, the Shapley value is the only value in which the probability assignment is a unique mixture of independent and identical distributions. It is concluded that, in both the finite and infinite exchangeable cases, the uniqueness of probability assignment in the Shapley value is due to exchangeability and the mixing with the uniform distribution.

<p>This study explores telecommuter travel behaviour by examining discretionary travel distance and mode choice. The study utilizes data obtained from the 2005 origin-destination survey conducted by TRANS, a joint transportation planning committee serving the National Capital Region of Canada. The study compares and explains the discretionary travel behavior of teleworkers relative to other population groups and identifies that the average teleworker travels 3 times farther than regular workers and 1.7 times farther than non-workers for discretionary purposes. Regression indicates that dependent children, vehicle accessibility, housing type, residential distance to the urban core, land-use mix, residence within a Greenbelt region and day of the week all positively affect travel distance. Conversely, age, proximity to shopping centers and inclement weather demonstrate significant negative effects. Then, through binary logistic regression, the study confirms that work status significantly influences mode choice. Similarly, the following predictor variables demonstrate a significant positive effect towards active mode choice: teleworker work status, larger household size, greater income, warmer temperature, closer proximity to shopping centers, apartment housing type, trips for recreational and restaurant purposes, taking subsequent trips in a day, and travel between 8:00 A.M. and 4:00 P.M. On the contrary, increased entropy, trips within the Greenbelt region, dependent children under 16 years old, increased vehicle accessibility and trips for transporting someone or for shopping purposes all reduce the probability of active travel mode choice.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

The research study focused on assessing the potential risk of failing to maintain water supply in the Rand Water area. The study analysed all factors and areas that contributes to water supply in the Rand Water area; this included municipalities supplied by Rand Water, the Department of Water Affairs and other factors that directly affect Rand Water supply such as population growth, increased urbanisation and acid mine drainage. The objectives of the study were: (a) is to determine the potential risk of failing to maintain supply in the Rand Water supply area, in other words, the likeliness of water not being supplied adequately to customers. (b) generate timely and credible information to determine the understanding, awareness, and acknowledgement by the sampled management group of the existence of the potential water supply risk in the Rand Water supply area. This will be done through a quantitative study. The research study approach that was utilized was a quantitative methodology; this approach included the distribution of questionnaires to all relevant stakeholders in the Rand Water supply area. To address the problems that are highlighted in the problem statement and achieve the objectives of the study these answered questionnaires were then sent to a Statistical consultant at North-West University‟s Potchefstroom Campus, to be analysed using an SPSS Version 21 statistical program. The questionnaires were divided into the three big municipal customers, these municipalities combined takes a total of 74.35% of Rand Water supply; these are Johannesburg Water which is part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality and other small municipalities and the Department of Water Affairs‟ officials. Many previous studies also were assessed to be able to help this study establish the seriousness of the water challenge, the amount of work that has already been done, factors contributing to the problem and finally, measures that can be put in place to address the problem. The results that were obtained for this study provided many relationships between this study‟s selected variables and also highlighted the need to put certain strategies in place to be able to control the growing demand for water in the Rand Water system. The name of the Department of Water Affairs has changed many times over the year. It used to be called DWAF (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, then DWEA (Department of Water and Environmental Affairs, then DWA (Department of Water Affairs) and it has recently been changed to DWS (Department of Water and Sanitation. For the purposes of this study this department will be called DWA (The Department of Water Affairs) The results were very relevant as most of the relationships were found between variables that are practically supposed to be related in order for the problem to be dealt with fruitfully. From these results it could be concluded that the risk of failing to maintain water supply in the Rand Water supply area does exist, if certain factors were allowed to trend the way they‟ve been trending without measures in place to counteract them. It could also be concluded that certain measures have been initiated to deal with the problem; this included water demand management. Results indicated that collective efforts from all stakeholders in the Rand Water supply area will be crucial in addressing the water supply challenge and avoid future failure to supply. To close the gap between previous research studies and this research study recommendations were made. Areas of future research were also highlighted; these are areas that can add value in providing valued information to help the challenge of water shortage in the Rand Water supply area. This area of future research studies will also be crucial in identifying other external factors that were not highlighted in the study but contribute to the problem. This area of future research studies will also help when implementing turnaround strategies to avoid the risk of failing to maintain supply in the Rand Water area as it will be able to highlight a different strategy that deals with the problem holistically. / MBA, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015