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The public sector often invests in large projects in different sectors, such as education, health care and infrastructure. It can be argued that investment appraisal process in these projects should differ from conventional approaches due to the complex interests the public sector holds, which often implies that several aspects need to be considered. Conventional techniques may not suffice and therefore this thesis aims to investigate the applicability of real options analysis and multi-criteria analysis in a combined approach. The study is conducted in the form of a case study at publicly owned Sundsvalls Logistikpark, where options in the form of the utilization of development areas and the non-monetary aspect reduction of carbon dioxide are included in the appraisal. The model developed compares two alternative strategies where one is based upon conventional usage of the area and the other represents the environmentally friendly alternative. The results show that including the value of flexibility in the appraisal significantly raises the initial valuation, whereas the comparison of the strategies show that the results either details which strategy is preferred, if input to both strategies are available, or where the threshold for indifference lies. It is concluded that this model is applicable in terms of its ability to capture the value of flexibility and inclusion of several aspects of the decision problem. However, it is also concluded that the numerous simplifications made may lead to unreliability in the results, and the process of obtaining accurate input may time-consuming, depending on the case. The usability of the model is high in terms of its potential, but lower in terms of the knowledge-based threshold required of the user.

Due to the current high levels of urbanisation and the lingering effects of Apartheid, South African municipalities have experienced difficulties in planning for sustainability and more specifically sustainable community development. Sustainable community development is needed in order to achieve more integrated and sustainable towns and cities with an improved urban environment and a higher quality of life. Due to this sustainable community development is of particular relevance to South Africa. Although policies and legislation exist at international, national and local level, there is a lack of suitable planning instruments to guide sustainable community development. Tlokwe Local Municipality is researched as study area to test and develop planning instruments for sustainable community development. An assessment matrix of sustainability indicators is linked to Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and applied to identify the themes and sub-themes applicable to sustainability in which intervention is required to improve the sustainability rating of the municipality. A Goal Assessment Matrix (GAM) approach is used to score and prioritise municipal projects, plans and strategies according to sustainable community development fundamentals. The top scoring projects are indicative of the achievement of sustainable community development goals and objectives. The result of the sustainability assessment is that the Tlokwe Local Municipality is considered to be relatively sustainable, performing overall better than the three spheres of government against which it was measured. Subsequent to the GAM assessment a lack of alignment between the sectoral plans was identified as well as the duplication of projects. The projects, plans and strategies of the municipality are found to not have been formulated with sustainable community development framework as a guiding goal. It is recommended that municipalities use the assessment matrix methods to determine its level of sustainability when developing respective sectoral plans (SDFs, ITPs, EMFs and IDPs). Areas in which there is a lack of sustainability are highlighted and can consequently be addressed through intervention strategies. Prioritising municipal projects, plans and strategies through the use of GAM identifies crucial projects that need special attention to ensure their successful implementation as this will largely aid sustainable community development. Both the assessment matrix method and the GAM approach are valuable planning instruments with which to achieve sustainable community development. / Thesis (MArt et Scien (Urban and Regional Planning))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

Due to the current high levels of urbanisation and the lingering effects of Apartheid, South African municipalities have experienced difficulties in planning for sustainability and more specifically sustainable community development. Sustainable community development is needed in order to achieve more integrated and sustainable towns and cities with an improved urban environment and a higher quality of life. Due to this sustainable community development is of particular relevance to South Africa. Although policies and legislation exist at international, national and local level, there is a lack of suitable planning instruments to guide sustainable community development. Tlokwe Local Municipality is researched as study area to test and develop planning instruments for sustainable community development. An assessment matrix of sustainability indicators is linked to Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and applied to identify the themes and sub-themes applicable to sustainability in which intervention is required to improve the sustainability rating of the municipality. A Goal Assessment Matrix (GAM) approach is used to score and prioritise municipal projects, plans and strategies according to sustainable community development fundamentals. The top scoring projects are indicative of the achievement of sustainable community development goals and objectives. The result of the sustainability assessment is that the Tlokwe Local Municipality is considered to be relatively sustainable, performing overall better than the three spheres of government against which it was measured. Subsequent to the GAM assessment a lack of alignment between the sectoral plans was identified as well as the duplication of projects. The projects, plans and strategies of the municipality are found to not have been formulated with sustainable community development framework as a guiding goal. It is recommended that municipalities use the assessment matrix methods to determine its level of sustainability when developing respective sectoral plans (SDFs, ITPs, EMFs and IDPs). Areas in which there is a lack of sustainability are highlighted and can consequently be addressed through intervention strategies. Prioritising municipal projects, plans and strategies through the use of GAM identifies crucial projects that need special attention to ensure their successful implementation as this will largely aid sustainable community development. Both the assessment matrix method and the GAM approach are valuable planning instruments with which to achieve sustainable community development. / Thesis (MArt et Scien (Urban and Regional Planning))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013

Sustainable transport is now a popular goal of transport planning. As with any aspiration, systems and mechanisms are required to assess and gauge success in achieving this policy goal. There is increasing reliance on sustainable transport indicators as appropriate tools for this purpose. The usefulness and credibility of any indicator-based assessment will undoubtedly depend on the specific indicators utilised. As such, indicators must be selected carefully to maximise their contribution to the sustainable transport decision making process. A review of current applications of sustainable transport indicators has revealed however, that they are typically selected in an ad hoc and arbitrary fashion. Development of a framework that facilitates transparent and systematic indicator selection would therefore represent a significant advance in transport research. In that regard, this thesis presents the Evaluative and Logical Approach to Sustainable Transport Indicator Compilation (ELASTIC), a methodological framework which provides a flexible, participatory and systematic mechanism for identifying and selecting key sustainable transport indicators. The output of ELASTIC is the Transport Sustainability Profile (TSP), a small un-aggregated suite of sustainable transport indicators which together can provide a snapshot of the sustainability of a transport system. Using various multi-criteria and statistical techniques, ELASTIC applies a robust process to evaluate and select indicators based on their analytical soundness and their relevance to key objectives of sustainable transport. A generic and transferable tool, ELASTIC is capable of application at different geographical scales as well as to non-transport sustainability assessment. For the purpose of this research, the framework is demonstrated through application to England, UK where the judgements of relevant Academics and Transport Planners are elicited and entered into the ELASTIC framework to systematically select a subset of 15 indicators from an initial set of 200. By disaggregating the sample of stakeholders into regional groupings, different context-specific suites of indicators for the regional groupings were also derived. The demonstration confirms ELASTIC to be an inclusive and practical approach to compiling a suite of sustainable transport indicators specific to context and which reflects the unique values of key stakeholders.

The aim of this thesis is to develop a GIS methodology to assess urban vulnerability to earthquake through a spatial analytical procedure in which vulnerability is taught of as a spatial decision problem. The main concepts within the framework is vulnerability assessment. In its typology, the defined technology is highly current, emergent and necessary for the local goverments. Considering the discussions on subsidiarity for local area services such a knowledge is hoped to prove the capacity of local goverments. First earthquake losses were estimated. Earthquake loss estimation activities can be categorized into two series of phases: pre-disaster phase / risk assessment, mitigation management post- disaster phase / emergency and rehabilitation management Two methods were used in estimating the primary damages and losses due to earthquake. In the first method spatial multicriteria analysis was performed to assign a vulnerability value to each building. As a second method SRAS(Seismic Risk Analysis Software) was used. Besides criteria for social risks, criteria for systematic vulnerability, which may influence the emergency response and management activities following the earthquake, were also considered. Criteria standardization, weighting and combining were accomplished by means of multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) methods, the theoretical background being based on the multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT). Expert knowledge based analysis was used and also three different earthquake scenarios about Odunpazari were run on SRAS. After the aggregation of the vulnerability values from building scale to neighbourhood scale, the urban facilities were analysed. Results showed that, 1/3 of the neighborhoods in Odunpazari are vulnerable to any possible earthquake.

In a peer-to-peer shared ride system, transportation clients with traffic demand negotiate with transportation hosts offering shared ride services for ad-hoc ridesharing in a continuously changing environment, using wireless geosensor networks. Due to the distinctive characteristic of this system—a complex and non-deterministic transportation network, and a local peer-to-peer communication strategy—clients will always have limited transportation knowledge, both from a spatial and a temporal perspective. Clients hear only from nearby hosts, and they do not know the future availability of current or new hosts. Clients can plan optimal trips prior to departure according to their current knowledge, but it is unlikely that these trips will be final optimal trip due to continuously changing traffic conditions. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the trip quality in this dynamic environment in order to assess different communication and wayfinding strategies. (For complete abstract open document)

This research aims to define and develop a methodology to assist an individual traveller to select healthier and more sustainable transport routes and modes among admissible transport options and highlight the trade-offs among multiple objectives in terms of health, economic, social and environmental benefits. It aims to assist an individual traveller with multi-objectives to make more informed decisions in route and mode planning. The objectives in the case study were identified as personal energy expenditure, travel time, travel cost, CO2 emissions and energy resource consumption concerning sustainability. / This research presents procedures for estimating a range of costs and benefits for journeys; procedures for determining the optimal route for an individual’s trip in an urban area based on cost and benefit estimates and preference weights for specific objectives; procedures for undertaking sensitivity analysis for the optimal route; and uses of the cost and benefit estimation and optimal route generation procedures to conduct a case study for a realistic journey in Melbourne. / An active transport journey planner model was developed in MS Excel to allow users to set constraints for most objectives and give their corresponding weightings, respectively. The recommended transport solution (the least total disutility one) and ranking of other options along with their detailed objective-related information are derived. A case study shows that the methodology developed could be applied in selecting more informed transport solutions based on the user’s multi-objective preferences. In addition, transport options incorporating more cycling and walking have the higher probability to deliver healthier and more sustainable solution to users if social, environmental concerns were considered beyond economic issues. Meanwhile, in sensitivity analysis, the tornado diagrams and spiderplots diagrams are used for demonstrating how sensitive each transport option’s disutility is to the weightings of objectives.

The West Coast of Vancouver Island (WCVI), with an average gross wave energy flux of 40-50 kW/m at the continental shelf, possesses one of the most energetic wave climates in the world and has the potential to meet the electric demands of the utility grid on Vancouver Island and numerous coastal remote communities. However, the development of wave energy sites has the potential to interrupt other existing marine activities and wave energy operations could damage the sensitive marine ecosystems. The objective of this thesis is to identify strategically important sites for wave energy – sites that have great economic potential in an energy generation context yet have minimal impacts on existing economic uses and minimal ecological impacts. Wave energy technology agnostic frequency and directional filters were developed based on a unionized representation of Wave Energy Converter (WEC) performance generated by combining four types of WEC performance characteristics. These two filters improved the quantification of extractable wave resources by accounting for the technological limits of wave frequencies and directions. Subsequently, a detailed economic evaluation was developed to estimate the influence of the distance to the coastline and transmission network, electricity market sizes, and a technology agnostic description of WEC farm physical layout on the selection of wave energy sites. The technology-agnostic description of WEC farm physical layouts was designed based on the cable properties, cable termination/distribution, and cable protection used in real-world projects. The WEC farm capacities are constrained by the transmission cable to minimize the cost for developing wave energy sites. Lastly, a multi-criteria analysis, which includes four stakeholder perspective scenarios, was developed to identify the strategically important sites for future wave energy development along the WCVI. A total of 16 regions, covering an area of 392 km2 and having an average of 35.68 kW/m wave energy flux, were identified as strategically important sites for wave farms. These regions show the potential to meet the electric demand of Vancouver Island, and they are worth further investigated when selecting a location for future wave energy development. / Graduate

Uncertainty associated with the potential impact of climate change on supply availability, varied success with demand-side interventions such as water efficiency and changes in priority relating to hydrometric data collection and ownership, have resulted in challenges for water resources system management particularly in data-sparse regions. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to assess the reliability, resilience and sustainability of water resources systems in both data-rich and data-sparse regions with an emphasis on robust decision-making in data-sparse regions. To achieve this aim, new resilience indicators that capture water resources system failure duration and extent of failure (i.e. failure magnitude) from a social and environmental perspective were developed. These performance indicators enabled a comprehensive assessment of a number of performance enhancing interventions, which resulted in the identification of a set of intervention strategies that showed potential to improve reliability, resilience and sustainability in the case studies examined. Finally, a multi-criteria decision analysis supported trade-off decision making when the reliability, resilience and sustainability indicators were considered in combination. Two case studies were considered in this research: Kingston and St. Andrew in Jamaica and Anyplace in the UK. The Kingston and St. Andrew case study represents the main data-sparse case study where many assumptions were introduced to fill data gaps. The intervention strategy that showed great potential to improve reliability, resilience and sustainability identified from Kingston and St. Andrew water resources assessment was the ‘Site A-east’ desalination scheme. To ameliorate uncertainty and lack of confidence associated with results, a methodology was developed that transformed a key proportion of the Anyplace water resources system from a data-rich environment to a data-sparse environment. The Anyplace water resources system was then assessed in a data-sparse environment and the performance trade-offs of the intervention strategies were analysed using four multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) weighting combinations. The MCDA facilitated a robust comparison of the interventions’ performances in the data-rich and data-sparse case studies. Comparisons showed consistency in the performances of the interventions across data-rich and data-sparse hydrological conditions and serve to demonstrate to decision makers a novel approach to addressing uncertainty when many assumptions have been introduced in the water resources management process due to data sparsity.