Guidelines for Evaluating Process Plant Buildings for External Explosions, Fires, and Toxic Releases


Book Description

Siting of permanent and temporary buildings in process areas requires careful consideration of potential effects of explosions and fires arising from accidental release of flammable materials. This book, which updates the 1996 edition, provides a single-source reference that explains the American Petroleum Institute (API) permanent (752) and temporary (753) building recommended practices and details how to implement them. New coverage on toxicity and updated standards are also highlighted. Practical and easy-to-use, this reliable guide is a must-have for implementing safe building practices.




Bus Route Evaluation Standards


Book Description

Provides updated information to the 1984 United States Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) report entitled Bus Service Evaluation Methods: A Review, however, the results are not directly comparable as the respondents, questions asked, and analytical procedures differ in the 1994 synthesis. It does report what agencies do in the area of bus route, not system, evaluation standards, and how they undertake these efforts.




Decision Support Methods in Modern Transportation Systems and Networks


Book Description

This book contains an abundance of numerical analyses based on significant data sets, illustrating importance of environmentally friendly solutions requiring transport networks to be redesigned or clean zones to be implemented. What kind of steps should be taken to redesign transport network? How to evaluate efficiency or flexibility of transport system and city logistics? What factors can be taken into account in the process of optimizing the functioning of public transport or paid parking zones? How to optimize supply chains (including last mile delivering and routing problem)? Which of the multi-criteria methods should be applied to support decision making processes while tackling problems of global transport systems? Answers to these and many other questions can be found in this book.With regard to the research results discussed and the selected solutions applied, the book entitled "Decision support methods in modern transportation systems and networks" primarily addresses the needs of three target groups: · Scientists and researchers (ITS field) · Local authorities (responsible for the transport systems at the urban and regional level) · Representatives of business (traffic strategy management) and industry (manufacturers of ITS components).




Regulation and Best Practices in Public and Nonprofit Marketing


Book Description

The volume contains the papers presented during the 9th International Congress of the International Association on Public and Nonprofit Marketing (IAPNM) entitled "Regulation and Best Practices in Public and Nonprofit Marketing." Structured in accordance with the sessions of the mentioned Congress, the volume includes papers and relevant contributions on marketing research development in the public administration, healthcare and social assistance, higher education, local development and, more generally, nonprofit organizations. The social marketing specific issues take an important part of the volume giving the diversity of the approached topics as well as the large number of researchers concerned with this matter. Though of small dimensions, the contents of the sessions dedicated the revival and reinvention of public marketing must be underlined, as well as of the transfer of public marketing best practices to the South-Eastern European states. Publishing this volume represents a term of the interest expressed by over 40 academic and research groups in Europe and other continents with interests in the public and nonprofit marketing field, as well as in other European states' bodies that develop specific empirical studies.




Bus Service Evaluation Methods


Book Description

Analysis of performance standards related to route design, service quality and finances/productivity; statistics, evaluation procedures and standards by transit agency.







Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual


Book Description

Accompanying CD-ROM contains full text of the manual, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and a library of related documents.




Evaluating Explanations


Book Description

Psychology and philosophy have long studied the nature and role of explanation. More recently, artificial intelligence research has developed promising theories of how explanation facilitates learning and generalization. By using explanations to guide learning, explanation-based methods allow reliable learning of new concepts in complex situations, often from observing a single example. The author of this volume, however, argues that explanation-based learning research has neglected key issues in explanation construction and evaluation. By examining the issues in the context of a story understanding system that explains novel events in news stories, the author shows that the standard assumptions do not apply to complex real-world domains. An alternative theory is presented, one that demonstrates that context -- involving both explainer beliefs and goals -- is crucial in deciding an explanation's goodness and that a theory of the possible contexts can be used to determine which explanations are appropriate. This important view is demonstrated with examples of the performance of ACCEPTER, a computer system for story understanding, anomaly detection, and explanation evaluation.




Evaluation of Basic Government Service Capability in Chinese Cities


Book Description

This book reports on the results of a survey of 38 major Chinese cities’ public service performances and provides an overview of the development of basic public services in the larger cities. The quality of urban public services is examined from 9 different perspectives: basic healthcare and public health, housing, public transportation, public security, employment and social security, compulsory education, urban environment, culture and sports, and government services. Moreover, a series of indices are applied to further study the degree of public satisfaction with basic public services in these cities. These indices include the index of GDP leveraging satisfaction with basic public services, the rising index of satisfaction with basic public services in cities, and the development index of satisfaction with the basic public service elements. On the basis of the survey results, this book also identifies the most important social issues among the surveyed public, including food and drinking water safety, information security, housing prices, pensions, and air and environment quality.