Infrastructure and Technology Management

Reflecting concerns over the environment, health, and security stemming from the consumption of conventional fossil fuel energy sources, such as gas, oil, and coal, has been raised in the world, which increases the expectation of replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy [1]. In addition to these concerns, rising prices of fossil fuels have forced many countries to support the development of renewable energy sources, such as, solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal [3]. Among these renewable energy sources, solar photovoltaics (PV), which is also known as solar electric system, has long been considered as a clean and sustainable energy that directly converts solar radiation into current electricity by using semiconducting materials [4]. A PV system comprises a PV module and other electrical components, such as charge controllers, inverters, and disconnects. The direct conversion of sunlight to electricity occurs without any moving parts or environmental emissions during operation, which significantly protects the environment. Meanwhile, it has been well proved that PV installations can operate for no less than 100 years with little maintenance, thus extremely reducing the operating cost [4]. As Fig. 1.1 shows, this report begins with a detailed analysis of policies and regulations influencing the current innovation activities of solar PV. In particular, this study pays attention to the government policy supporting technological innovation and market creation. In addition, this report profited substantially from the knowledge of a few experts and research leaders in the industry and academic field who made themselves available for interviews and other queries. Then followed with several case studies on three countries – Germany, Japan, and the USA – some data were collected to analyze how market entry, product safety, environmental policies, and incentives influence the innovation of PV industry. Finally, we provide conclusions and policy implications on the development of the solar PV industry.

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.

The lighting industry has gone under major transformations in recent decades. These changes are both at components/luminaires and system level. In 1999, Haitz stated that lumen per package will increase by a factor of 30 and the cost per lumen will decrease by factor of 10 [1]. This is also known as Haitz’s law [2]. In 2011, Haitz’s law is revisited; though the cost per lumen decremental rate remained the same, lumen per package incremental rate dropped to 20 [3]. According to revised Haitz’s law, LED has entered to era that can overcome its adoption barrier—high lamp price and low light output per emitter [2, 4]—in general lighting section. Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance (NGLIA)’s presentation to the Department of Energy (DOE) shows that LED would disrupt the traditional lighting resource and dominate the lighting market by 2020 [5].

This chapter presents a review of multi criteria decision models used in the energy sector and demonstrates application through the case of geothermal energy. The case is taken from Oregon which is located in teh pacific northwest region of the US. Experts are used to determine the criteria what is important for this application and the region.

The goal of this research is to develop a decision model that can be used to identify the technology transfer potential of a research proposal. An organization can use the model to select the proposals whose research outcomes are more likely to move into application. The model begins to close the chasm between research and application – otherwise known as the “valley of death.” A hierarchical decision model, along with desirability curves, was used to understand the complexities of the researcher and recipient relationship, specific to technology transfer. In this research, the evaluation criteria of several research organizations were assessed to understand the extent to which the success attributes that were identified in literature were considered when reviewing research proposals. The quantified model was validated using a case study involving demand response (DR) technology proposals in the Pacific Northwest.

Compilation of information is increasingly becoming more important for health organizations from financial and time aspects. By methodical study of adaptive systems, healthcare organizations can gain new insights of burdensome issues within the organization as well as healthcare delivery management. These actions have become more important with the changes in the healthcare environment in the last couple of decades where several external entities have impacts on healthcare organizations directly and/or indirectly. One of the most onerous tasks ahead of organizations is to anticipate these changes and prepare for them. Knowing the external environment can be the key to leading a successful and competitive health system. However, identifying and behaving toward all the external changes pose great time and resource challenges for organizations. Health organizations can posit the question of “what are the current external changes that have the power to affect them?” This study will take a look into emerging extrinsic changes for the US healthcare environment in different areas. A literature review will be performed in order to pinpoint the different contemporary change perspectives and their sub-criteria. In order to better illustrate these issues, Ishikawa diagram (cause-and-effect diagram) is used in this study.

A significant contributor to high-quality healthcare is current, accurate information about the patient. With an increase in use of electronic health records in the United States, one might be forgiven for imagining that missing or tardy health data is a thing of the past, but there is a problem. Health information is stored in silos, and information transfer is sometimes difficult, even in 2014. Technologies exist that can improve the portability of electronic health records, and this study surveys a few of those technologies from the patient perspective to determine which is most likely to meet the need.

This study presents a technology assessment for reducing nosocomial infections. Nosocomial infections (also known as hospital-acquired infection or HAI) present numerous problems for healthcare institutions including increased costs, increased use of hazardous cleaners, and patient reluctance toward treatment. The goal is to incorporate more than the traditional economic point of view in evaluating alternatives for reducing infections. The Analytical Hierarchy Process is used to assess the feasibility of candidate technologies. Traditional criteria such as infection reduction and cost are used in addition compatibility with existing procedures, and staff acceptance was used for evaluating technologies. Infection reduction and staff acceptance were determined to be the most important criterion through expert interviews. The analysis established that utilizing RFID for handwashing compliance was the superior technology given its superior reduction in HAIs and good staff and patent acceptance.

People can be classified being overweight by using the number called body mass index (BMI). BMI correlates with the amount of body fat of people, and it can be calculated by dividing weight in kilograms with height in meter squared [1]. For adults who are classified overweight have a BMI between 25 and 29.9 and those who have BMI of 30 or greater are classified obese [1]. There are many causes leading people to become overweight and obesity in the USA: for example, (1) high-fat food intake such as fast food that contains high sugar and fat is the most organized cause, (2) the absence of physical activity for energy expenditure, and (3) lack of sleep which is associated with weight gain [2, 3]. In the present, there are many adults in the USA who are classified overweight. According to the prevalence of overweight, obesity, and extreme obesity among adults: USA trends 1960–1962 through 2009–2010 report from the National Center for Health and Statistics (NCHS), it has shown that there are 33% of the US adults who are classified overweight and the average trend has remained the same without a significant decline [4]. With the large percentage of overweight adults and the increase in number of dieters from Gallup survey by 33% from 2004 to 2010, the number of dieters could be anticipated to reach 108 million with 86 million of them are trying to lose weight by themselves. With the increase of number of dieters, the total of US weight loss market is also estimated to grow 4.5% to $65 billion in 2012 which is higher than the 2% growth from the last year [5].

Cleaner air, renewable energy, and domestic energy use are the primary reasons to drive electric cars.

By the increased use of fossil fuels on day-to-day life, there is a huge impact on the environment because of the carbon emissions emitted from these vehicles. Hence, there increased a need for alternate energy for vehicles. For the success of adopting the electric vehicle in the market, this report helps in enlightening the need for replacing the conventional vehicles by electric cars in the current world of technology and also extends it by constructing the roadmap for the pioneer of electric vehicles – Tesla motors. The competitors for Tesla are not just electric vehicles but they are bigger firms such as Audi, Mercedes, etc. which manufacture a higher range of comfort cars which run on conventional energy. One of the biggest hurdles faced by the electric vehicle market is the lack of running the EV vehicle for a long range on a single charge and replacement of conventional vehicles in the market by electric cars. The goal is to analyze the current situation of electric car adoption, to analyze the current status of the EV technology, and to prepare a roadmap on how they are going to reach their goal of successfully being a pioneer in automobile industry.

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

Technology roadmapping is becoming more popular in the recent days because of the value it delivers to the organizations, helping them plan strategically and align the technology with business objectives. This paper presents a creation of technology roadmap for drones, used by Amazon for their latest service Amazon Prime Air. The competition in the e-commerce industry is growing every day, and one major area where it makes a huge difference is the shipping prices and time for the delivery. To tackle this problem and overtake its competition, Amazon has come up with the drone delivery concept. Shipping costs and time are what have driven Amazon to choose drones for a faster delivery, low costs, low emissions, and happy customers. It is always difficult to predict the engineering technologies and advancements because of how fast the improvements are taking place. Without any historical data, it is not so easy to forecast them. Drones have been around us since not long ago, which is why predicting the future is not so easy. The focus of this paper is on the drones, and Amazon is going to use for 30 min Prime Air deliveries directly to home. Time is very precious today and that is one of the driving factors for the idea of using drones. Drones are now able to serve the military, for surveillance (wildlife), to help in search and rescue operations, and in shooting movies and sports. Drones are proving to help us in every aspect possible because of the pace at which the technology is improving every day [1].

By the increased use of smartphone on day-to-day life, there is a huge impact on the environment because of the non-environmentally friendly production process, carbon emission, the use of toxic material, recycled process, and e-waste. For the success of making an eco-friendly phone, this paper helps in enlightening the need for technology developments and constructing the roadmap for the pioneer of eco-friendly phone. This paper first uses SWOT as a tool to analyze Google’s internal and external issues, and then a list of 9 market drivers and 14 product features are presented and used to develop the driver-product feature rankings. According to the ranking, technology benchmarking and resource allocation are presented. A final technology roadmap of developing a Google eco-friendly phone of the three timelines is provided at the end.

In the United States, the backyard swimming pool is an iconic upgrade to the standard residential pool. For some, a pool represents that success has been achieved; for others it is used as a social setting point during the hot summer; and lastly the swimming pool is used for recreation. The recreational pool industry also has a vested interest in the construction and maintenance of swimming pools. The total number of new residential pools installed in the United States has dropped from 140,000 installations per year in 2007 to 50,000 installations per year in 2009. These numbers are similar for other Western countries. But, the number of pool installations has remained flat at 50,000 installations per year, in the United States, since the financial crisis of 2008. As such, the residential swimming pool industry has a vested interest in improving the ability to install and sell pools [2].

Cloud computing emerged in its current form in the last decade and quickly became popular as it offers a different way to develop, implement, and maintain and pay for IT services in compare with the traditional on-premise approach [42]. The fast-growing adoption of cloud computing is attributed to the benefits it offers to firms over the on-premise environment, like sharply reduced capital expenditure and upfront investment, increased speed to market, more flexible costs and capacity: use it and pay for it when you need it only, cheaper disaster recovery solutions, access to the latest technologies, and more efficient collaboration of global teams [5, 41].

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.