Water flowing in streams has value for various types of recreationists and is essential for fish and wildlife. Since water demands for offstream uses in the arid west have been steadily increasing, increasing instream flows to enhance the recreational experience might be in conflict with established withdrawals for uses such as agriculture, industries and households. It is the intent of this study to contribute to an economic assessment of the tradeoff between maintaining instream flow for river recreation use and offstream uses; that is, to develop and apply a method to measure costs and benefits of water used for recreation on a river. Since market prices are not observable for instream flows, the estimation economic value of instream flow would present well known difficulties. The household production function theory was used to build the theoretical model to measure economic value of instream flow. Policy implication are discussed with emphasis on application of the information to water management decisions.

Magister Artium (Development Studies) - MA(DVS) / A prepaid water metering project was implemented in various high density suburbs around the city of Harare in 2015 with the intention of spreading the project throughout the whole country. It was anticipated that the use of prepaid water meters as a water management device would improve the social, health, hygiene and general well-being of the poor households in the Sunningdale high density suburb. This study will investigate the social implications that were caused by the use of prepaid water meters as a tool for water management among poor households in this high density suburbs. The impact of prepaid water meter technology has been felt by water consumers in Sunningdale who have shared their experiences and attitudes towards this recently introduced innovation in water service delivery within Harare high density suburbs. The study examines the implications of using prepaid water meters as a water conservation measure and considers the behaviour, health and hygiene as well as home-based livelihoods of low-income water users. This study also provides answers for the premature abandonment of the expansion of the prepaid water meter project into other surrounding cities in Zimbabwe.

No description available.

This study applies a test for subadditivity (natural monopoly) to Australian telecommunications industry data for the period 1954 to 1990. If an industry exhibits subadditive cost, a monopoly can provide total industry output at a lower cost than multiple firms. The test for subadditivity is dependent on econometric estimation of a theoretically valid cost function. The cost function employed in this study is a multiple output variation of the symmetric generalised McFadden cost function. The main advantage of this specification is the ability to impose concavity on the cost function with respect to the input prices without imposing a priori restrictions on the input substitution elasticities.While there have been numerous previous subadditivity studies, this study is novel in two respects. First, this study contains the results of a direct test involving the provision of data carriage services provided by Australias monopoly carrier from 1970 to 1990. Thus, the test for subadditivity is applied to a relatively new service at a time when demand is in its infancy. Second, the approach to modelling makes explicit allowance for radical technological changes and lags in adjustment.The results indicate cost complementarity between data-aggregate output and large economies of scale. However, these effects are not strong enough to guarantee subadditivity. Analysis suggests that the most likely cause of subadditivity is the extent of network duplication between competitors. Evidence of subadditivity is found for firms that duplicate more than 30% of the networks fixed cost. This implies that at the national level, competition policy is the right choice. This suggests that regulated competition is likely to be no more costly than monopoly.

Aims: The aim of this thesis was to identify the most cost effective urogynaecological treatment from a range of five standard therapies of 217 female patients, and to test the hypothesis that the conservative treatment of urinary incontinence was more cost effective than surgical or pharmacological interventions, using the cost per Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) as a common assessment. Methods: The first step in this process was to determine whether a generic cost effectiveness instrument, the York Quality of Life Questionnaire was sufficiently sensitive to allow its use in the field of urogynaecology. The York Questionnaire was compared with several other quality of life questionnaires and outcome measures that have been previously utilised in urinary incontinence, and was found to be equally sensitive in detecting change in quality of life as a result of treatment. The next step was to measure the costs required to produce this change in quality of life and to calculate the QALY's for five urogynaecological treatments in three prospective trials comprising of: a randomised trial of Nurse Continence Advisor versus Urogynaecologist conservative treatment of urinary incontinence (n=143), a prospective trial of laparoscopic versus open colposuspension (n=62), and the pharmacological treatment of detrusor instability (n=12). Costs assessed included consultation fees, investigations, theatre costs, hospital stay, patient time off work & travel expenses, and reduction in protective pad costs. Results: The cost/QALY for 5 years as a result of each of the five treatments varied from $28,009 for the Nurse Continence Advisor conservative treatment to $134,069 for the open colposuspension treatment. Conclusions: This finding suggests that the conservative treatment of urinary incontinence is the most cost effective, and should be utilised as the first form of treatment. As a consequence, financial resources would be more efficiently utilised in the conservative treatment of urinary incontinence, such as increasing the availability of services offered by Nurse Continence Advisors and physiotherapists.

In order to meet the fast-growing demand, airlines have applied much more compact air-fleet operation schedules which directly lead to airport congestion. One result is the flight delay, which appears more frequently and seriously; the flight delay can also significantly damage airline's profitability and reputation The aim of this project is to enhance the dispatch reliability of Australian X Airline's fleet through a newly developed approach to reliability modeling, which employs computer-aided numerical simulation of the departure delay distribution and related cost to achieve the flight schedule optimization. The reliability modeling approach developed in this project is based on the probability distributions and Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) techniques. Initial (type I) delay and propagated (type II) delay are adopted as the criterion for data classification and analysis. The randomicity of type I delay occurrence and the internal relationship between type II delay and changed flight schedule are considered as the core factors in this new approach of reliability modeling, which compared to the conventional assessment methodologies, is proved to be more accurate on the departure delay and cost evaluation modeling. The Flight Delay and Cost Simulation Program (FDCSP) has been developed (Visual Basic 6.0) to perform the complicated numerical calculations through significant amount of pseudo-samples. FDCSP is also designed to provide convenience for varied applications in dispatch reliability modeling. The end-users can be airlines, airports and aviation authorities, etc. As a result, through this project, a 16.87% reduction in departure delay is estimated to be achieved by Australian X Airline. The air-fleet dispatch reliability has been enhanced to a higher level - 78.94% compared to initial 65.25%. Thus, 13.35% of system cost can be saved. At last, this project also achieves to set a more practical guideline for air-fleet database and management upon overall dispatch reliability optimization.

<p>This research gives an insight into the difficulties found to handle logistics and presents solution to manage logistics saving costs without sacrificing customer satisfaction.</p>

<p>Low-Cost Housing Projects is an essential part in the line of developing sustainable solutions for the provision of shelter for ordinary people in the third world. In poor countries severe problems like population growth, uncontrolled urbanisation processes, deforestation and erosion are present as a result of misuse of all different kinds of resources; this is the fact also in Ethiopia. This degree project is a sub-project integrated in a larger research project at Halmstad University concerning Sustainable Low Cost Housing for the Kambaata Region, Ethiopia. The purpose of this sub-project is to plan and design two dwellings as when erected will serve as a demonstration project in Durame the main urban area of the Kambaata region.</p><p>The houses will be constructed from the two suitable low cost building materials; Adobe</p><p>blocks and CSSB (Cement Stabilized Soil Blocks).</p>

<p>I uppsatsen utvärderas projektet Vägen in, som drevs av socialförvaltningen i Enköpingskommun 2007—2008. Deltagarna i projektet var individer med missbruksproblematik, oftatillsammans med en historia av kriminalitet och/eller psykisk ohälsa. Syftet med studien är attundersöka vilka kostnader och utfall Vägen in har gett upphov till i jämförelse medsocialtjänstens tidigare insatser för deltagarna, sett ur ett samhällsekonomiskt perspektiv.Bakgrunden till studien är att det i princip saknas samhällekonomiska utvärderingar avmissbruksvård. I studien jämförs samhällets kostnader för deltagarna två år innan projektet(2005-2006) med motsvarande kostnader under projekttiden (2007-2008). Dessa kostnaderställs sedan mot förändringen i deltagarnas kriminalitet samt förändringen av deraslivssituation.</p><p>Samhällets kostnader för deltagarna ökade med över 50 % under projekttiden. Deltagarnasmissbruk har minskat, men det går inte att se någon markant minskning av deltagarnaskriminalitet. Kostnaderna har skjutits över från staten till kommunen. I huvudsak harkostnaderna för psykiatrisk slutenvård och socialtjänstens öppenvård ökat, medanrättsväsendets kostnader har minskat. Samtidigt går det inte att se någon tydlig nedåtgåendetrend vad gäller deltagarnas kriminalitet. För att uttala sig om huruvida de ökade kostnadernakan motiveras med det utfall de ger upphov hade det krävts längre tidsserier med uppgifter omdeltagarnas inkomster. Med hänsyn till storleken på ökningen av samhällets kostnader fördeltagarna under projektet är det dock problematiskt att det inte går att se någon tydligminskning av deltagarnas kriminalitet.</p>

Within any manufacturing environment, the selection of the production or assembly machines is part of the day to day responsibilities of management. This is especially true when there are multiple types of machines that can be used to perform each assembly or manufacturing process. As a result, it is critical to find the optimal way to select machines when there are multiple related assembly machines available. The objective of this research is to develop and present a model that can provide guidance to management when making machine selection decisions of parallel, non-identical, related electronics assembly machines. A model driven Decision Support System (DSS) is used to solve the problem with the emphasis in optimizing available resources, minimizing production disruption, thus minimizing cost. The variables that affect electronics product costs are considered in detail. The first part of the Decision Support System was developed using Microsoft Excel as an interactive tool. The second part was developed through mathematical modeling with AMPL9 mathematical programming language and the solver CPLEX90 as the optimization tools. The mathematical model minimizes total cost of all products using a similar logic as the shortest processing time (SPT) scheduling rule. This model balances machine workload up to an allowed imbalance factor. The model also considers the impact on the product cost when expediting production. Different scenarios were studied during the sensitivity analysis, including varying the amount of assembled products, the quantity of machines at each assembly process, the imbalance factor, and the coefficient of variation (CV) of the assembly processes. The results show that the higher the CV, the total cost of all products assembled increased due to the complexity of balancing machine workload for a large number of products. Also, when the number of machines increased, given a constant number of products, the total cost of all products assembled increased because it is more difficult to keep the machines balanced. Similar results were obtained when a tighter imbalance factor was used.