Rafaa Khalifa

Survey of value assessment programs within transportation construction projects in U.S

In order to deliver transportation project on time and within budget, project planners and decision makers need to understand the desirable outcomes of projects or programs to make intelligent decisions. In addition, they also need effective tools and techniques to guide those decisions. In development of a guide that identifies available tools and techniques to foster useable and improved practices for key stakeholders of transportation projects, this paper as a preliminary study assessed current utilization of project delivery value improvement programs such as value engineering (VE), risk analysis/management (RA/RM) and constructability reviews (CR) for transportation projects. To determine whether states have adapted any of these programs or other innovative project delivery techniques, state DOT initiatives were studied through a review of past research and reports. Also, the collection of documents relevant to DOT practices that have been used as a literature review to identify and design the survey questions. Value Management Strategic (VMS), academic advisors at Portland State University (PSU), and project delivery experts were consulted to advice and validate the survey questions before and after the distribution stage. Then, three surveys of VE, RA, and CR were carried out with state DOT staff. Finally, the survey results were discussed in-depth in this paper to address the main issues of these programs and the level of its conducting within the project delivery processes related to transportation construction projects.

A comprehensive assessment of cloud computing for smart grid applications: A multi-perspectives framework

The IT system is one of the key infrastructures in order to add intelligent feature to power grids. Many papers anticipated a rocky road for IT system integration into power system and suggested the cloud computing adoption as a smart grid IT infrastructure to smooth the integration. Though cloud computing could overcome some of these integration challenges, it would bring some of its own. This study intends to give more insight to decision makers or utility companies to make a better decision whether to adopt cloud computing with regards to their needs or not. In the problem statement section is explained why the current approach to define advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing from selective point of views is not enough and might not be accurate, and a comprehensive assessment is required. The proposed multi-perspective framework takes all the criteria that would affect the assessment of cloud computing and put them into organizational, technical, economical, social and political categories. This framework would guide players in smart grid to better define benefits and challenges of cloud computing according to their needs.

Project Delivery: Highway Construction

The demand to deliver transportation projects in less time with limited budgets has driven the department of transportation (DOTs) in each state to research, develop, and adapt innovation tools, methods, processes, or programs for its construction projects. Due to the high level of risk and uncertainty in most transportation projects, especially in the cities and towns that have a large density of pollution, the selection of an appropriate delivery method has been more difficult and involves complex decision-making. Furthermore, some research has been conducted on the performance of project delivery methods in transportation and proved that there is a lack of comprehensive comparative approaches combined with adequate orientation into the future to provide a sufficient basis for strategic decisions.

Technology Assessment: Emerging Automotive Technologies for the Future

The continuous increase in human population is accompanied with more transportation demand. As a result, the pressure on transportation infrastructure has increased beyond the ability of infrastructure to catch up, leading to increased number of traffic incidents and road congestions [45, 46]. In the USA, there are more than 6 million traffic accidents, including fatality accidents that kill more than 30 thousand people every year [47]. Also, road congestion leads to a cost of about 4.8 billion hours of time, 1.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel (equivalent to 2 months operation of the Alaska Pipeline), and

Landscape Analysis: Fracking Technology

101 billion in combined delay and fuel costs, aside from cost associated with travel time and dependability [17, 47, 49].

Technology Assessment in the Financial Sector

Hydraulic fracturing of oil- and gas-bearing rocks, also known as fracking, is an established technology. Hydraulic fracturing was first started experimentally in 1947 in the Hugoton oil field in Kansas [1]. Fracking is an old technique that is used to increase the production of oil from the worked-out oil wells. However, it is considered as a new tool for producing natural gas. Fracking has been developed gradually by some international companies and organizations with no government support until the success has been proven.

Assessing emerging automotive technologies for the future

The advancement of the internet and information technology has been a great vehicle for the development of solutions for all human endeavors. The banking and the financial services sector is a beneficiary of the advancement in information and communication technology, as banking has evolved from traditional services to internet-based. Examples of these are, online ATM Locator, electronic check deposit, quick bank-to-bank transfers and many more. However, the general adoption of mobile banking solutions worldwide is still not that encouraging. There are several drivers which affect the adoption of these internet-based banking solutions, such as socio-economic factors, mobile device adoption, and user behavior. This research focuses on enumerating the key factors for user adoption of mobile banking solutions. The factors are grouped into multiple perspectives and prioritized by using the Hierarchical Decision Model (HDM). Even though all the factors are shown to be important, solution reliability and consumer privacy emerged as the two to be prioritized when developing a consumer-based banking solution. The research recommends that banks should concentrate on identifying features that makes life convenient to the consumer with little to no cost involved.

Applying Risk Analysis, Value Engineering, and Other Innovative Solutions for Project Delivery

A scenario-based multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) methodology has been developed and applied for the selection of automotive technology. The present study discusses, what are the problems for the current automotive technologies are, what requirements are outlined in the literatures and government guidelines/publications, considering different aspects of technological needs, public needs, policy measures etc. A set of criteria are developed, which cover multiple perspectives; reflecting the diverse stakeholders in the technology assessment, acquisition and adoption, in this case the government, the general public which includes drivers and pedestrians, automobile manufacturers. Three emerging technologies (Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication, Vehicle-to-Infrastructure and Full autonomous) were identified and evaluated based on the mentioned criteria using Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), a multi criteria decision tool. Since the technologies are still being developed and some are barely emerging, it is considered appropriate to use speculative values from the publications from industry and other credible sources and consider multiple scenarios each of which could occur. In our case, we considered 9 main scenarios and evaluated the three technology candidates under each of them.