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Traditional Domain (traditional + domain)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting50%

Selected Abstracts

Integrating Formalized User Experience within Building Design Models

COMPUTER-AIDED CIVIL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING, Issue 2 2007
Debajyoti Pati
As a result they do not consider information on how settings perform during use in areas critical to building owners and users. The authors argue that integrating performance data from buildings-in-use in building models will greatly enhance the end uses of conceptual modeling efforts in AEC, in design evolution as well as in the traditional domain of facility management. The authors describe a modeling study that integrates descriptive and evaluative/performance concepts in existing building models, discusses the paradigms and philosophical issues posed in such endeavors, and illustrates several end-use scenarios to support their assertions. [source]

Handling Weather Related Risks Through the Financial Markets: Considerations of Credit Risk, Basis Risk, and Hedging

JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE, Issue 2 2007
Linda L. Golden
The profits of many businesses are strongly affected by weather related events, and insurance against weather related risks (acts of God) has been a traditional domain for transfer of (certain) of these risks. Recent innovations in the capital market have now provided financial instruments to transfer and hedge some of these risks. Unlike insurance solutions, however, using these financial derivative instruments creates a situation in which the return to the purchaser of the instrument is no longer perfectly correlated with the loss experienced. Such a mismatch creates new risks which must be examined and evaluated as part of ascertaining cost effective risk management plans. Two newly engendered risks, basis risk (the risk created by the fact that the return from the financial derivative is a function of weather at a prespecified geographical location which may not be identical to the location of the firm) and credit risk (the risk that the counterparty to the derivative contract may not perform), are analyzed in this article. Using custom tailored derivatives from the over the counter market can decrease basis risk, but increases credit risk. Using standardized exchange traded derivatives decreases credit risk but increases basis risk. Here also the effectiveness of using hedging methods involving forwards and futures having linear payoffs (linear hedging) and methods using derivatives having nonlinear payoffs such as those involving options (nonlinear hedging) for the purpose of hedging basis risk are examined jointly with credit risk. [source]

Watershed protection: Capturing the benefits of nature's water supply services

NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 2 2005
Sandra L. Postel
Abstract Healthy watersheds provide valuable services to society, including the supply and purification of fresh water. Because these natural ecosystem services lie outside the traditional domain of commercial markets, they are undervalued and underprotected. With population and development pressures leading to the rapid modification of watershed lands, valuable hydrological services are being lost, which poses risks to the quality and cost of drinking water and the reliability of water supplies. Increasing the scale and scope of programmes to protect hydrological services requires policies that harmonize land uses in watersheds with the provision of these important natural services. This article summarizes key attributes of hydrological services and their economic benefits; presents a spectrum of institutional mechanisms for safeguarding those services; discusses programmes in Quito (Ecuador), Costa Rica and New York City; and offers some lessons learned and recommendations for achieving higher levels of watershed protection. [source]

Experience-based learning in innovation and production

R & D MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2008
Mark Pruett
How can we model and document the impact of experience in product innovation? We use data on the innovation and production histories of 294 product platforms to explore experience-based learning. We extend learning curve concepts from their traditional domain , the production process , into the product innovation process to build and test a richer, quantitative model of learning. The results suggest that learning occurs differently in the innovation process than in production. They also suggest that how and where a firm learns depend in part on the complexity of product components and sub-systems. Finally, we discuss the competitive implications for product innovation. [source]