Search

Because of climate changes, natural disasters are becoming more serious. For instance, the intensity of typhoons has been increasing in recent years. Typhoons and other natural disasters have high-impact low-probability characteristics. Thus, procedures for preparing for natural disasters and increasing power system resilience are important issues. This article proposes an all-inclusive process for system operators to make decisions for enhancing power system resilience and economic value during a severe weather event. This process first considers the typhoon track, the fragility curve and the recovery time of transmission lines. After collecting these data, system simulations and a calculated resilience index are implemented according to cases with and without disaster prevention. Next, the probability threshold and calculated economic value index are obtained based on numerical weather prediction wind speeds and the cost-loss ratio. Finally, the two indexes are considered in combination to obtain the highest resilience with the greatest benefit. The proposed process helps system operators make decisions for appropriate preventive actions at the least cost. An actual Taiwan power system and a severe weather event are used as an example to demonstrate the proposed decision analysis. The simulation results indicate the feasibility of the proposed method, which can reduce potential risks caused by extreme weather events with the maximum economic benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of the theory of planned behavior, this paper explores whether farmers who plant high-priced tea accept an alternative farming system out of concern for the environment and product quality. In total, 253 tea farmers in Taiwan was interviewed, and their data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Statistical results indicated that the environmental concerns and quality considerations of tea farmers influence their behavioral intentions toward the adoption of new technology systems. Other social and economic variables, such as government subsidies, professional counseling, organization promotion, and community network, also affect their decisionmaking intention. Farmers with heterogeneous expectations of the new farming system must be considered in these analytical strategies. Based on the respondents’ attitudes, effective promotion and implementation can be designed more specifically to target farmers’ adoption intention by addressing ecological and product quality concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a decision analysis on product integration of family security services and residential fire insurance in the London and Taiwan markets by using the proposed mathematical models for counting sustainable value. This paper shows the five main different results between London and Taiwan markets with ten different parameters of the family security market, to find out the optimal number of family security integrated services for each security company in London. The improvement of the risk aversion effect based on risk and financial management will enhance the market share of the private security industries in the London and Taiwan markets. The results of this research can serve as a reference for the decision-making of private security industries on product integration under sustainable value consideration. The research findings highlight the potential benefits for both the private security industry and the insurance industry in their design and negotiation for product integration to improve both of business operation and achieve corporate social responsibility goals to match the sustainability in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work, based on a real case, presents a model to estimate indirect workforce requirements of semiconductor fabrication facilities (fabs) so that the workforce can be fairly allocated. There is a concern in a real setting to fairly allocate the overall corporate workforce among the fabs, particularly when they compete in performance, and properly determining the actual requirement is the most critical in the decision process. The actual requirements of the workforce, especially the indirect workforce, for fabs may be indeterminate due to the lack of a well-defined workforce-output relationship. This paper presents a non-parametric frontier approach for estimating the indirect workforce, and the estimate is based on the best past performance adjusted to reflect the expected productivity growth. An empirical study was conducted in a leading foundry in Taiwan that has a number of 8-inch fabs. The proposed (re)allocation approach can provide an explicit decision support mechanism to balance the workloads in light of various production environments to enable an equitable basis for performance evaluation to foster constructive competition among the fabs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Lead-exposed workers may suffer adverse health effects under the currently regulated blood lead (BPb) levels. However, a probabilistic assessment about lead exposure-associated anemia risk is lacking. The goal of this study was to examine the association between lead exposure and anemia risk among factory workers in Taiwan.Methods: We first collated BPb and indicators of hematopoietic function data via health examination records that included 533 male and 218 female lead-exposed workers between 2012 and 2014. We used benchmark dose (BMD) modeling to estimate the critical effect doses for detection of abnormal indicators. A risk-based probabilistic model was used to characterize the potential hazard of lead poisoning for job-specific workers by hazard index (HI). We applied Bayesian decision analysis to determine whether BMD could be implicated as a suitable BPb standard.Results: Our results indicated that HI for total lead-exposed workers was 0.78 (95% confidence interval: 0.50-1.26) with risk occurrence probability of 11.1%. The abnormal risk of anemia indicators for male and female workers could be reduced, respectively, by 67-77% and 86-95% by adopting the suggested BPb standards of 25 and 15 μg/dL.Conclusions: We conclude that cumulative exposure to lead in the workplace was significantly associated with anemia risk. This study suggests that current BPb standard needs to be better understood for the application of lead-exposed population protection in different scenarios to provide a novel standard for health management. Low-level lead exposure risk is an occupational and public health problem that should be paid more attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supplier selection has been a popular topic since the selection of the most appropriate supplier for cooperation is being increasingly important for the success of an enterprise. The problem is multi-criteria in nature, and a variety of multi-criteria decision making methodologies have been proposed. However, most of them did not take into account the interrelationships among the critical success factors and the fuzziness of the data involved in deciding the preferences of the factors. The objective of this research is to propose a fuzzy analytic network process model to evaluate various aspects of suppliers. With the consultation with the experts, the proposed model can consider the feedback and interdependency of factors in a network, and the factors are pairwise compared under an uncertain environment. The weights of factors can be calculated, and the final priority of suppliers obtained. Semiconductor industry becomes increasingly globalize competitive nowadays, and a good supply chain relationship is essential for a company to survive and to acquire reasonable profit. Thus, a case study of IC packaging company selection in Taiwan is presented, and the proposed model is applied to facilitate the decision process. The priorities of the factors and the ranking of the suppliers can be a recommendation or reference for decision makers when making a supplier evaluation and selection decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a method frequently used to evaluate relative firm performance. However, high values in a few indicators can lead to a company being regarded as 'efficient', despite valuing poorly in other essential indicators. The Inefficiency Countervailed DEA (IC-DEA) method is thus developed. The method first defines an inefficient frontier using the proposed Reverse DEA (RDEA) model. An IC-DEA value is then determined by summing both the DEA and RDEA values. The IC-DEA method was applied to assess the environmental performance of major opto-electronic companies in Taiwan, demonstrating its applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Safe yield is commonly defined as the largest quantity of water that can be withdrawn without causing any negative effects in the area of interest. When, negative effects are induced by over-pumping, the safe yield must be reinterpreted according to the present conditions. Therefore, the optimum yield, defined as the quantity of water that can be withdrawn from the groundwater aquifer with minimum expected losses, is introduced to balance the economic profit and environmental protection in groundwater management. A decision model based on the loss function concept is presented to estimate the optimum yield from a groundwater basin, which has experienced seawater intrusion and subsidence caused by over-pumping. The model employs loss functions, which account for environmental deterioration and economic profit according to the hydrogeological conditions and pumping rates. The optimum yield from a groundwater basin can thus be obtained by minimizing the expected value of the loss function. The method is applied to a groundwater basin in Yun-Lin, Taiwan. Analysis results indicate that the optimum yield of groundwater in this region is 619 million ton/yr, which is far lower than the current annual groundwater consumption. The method is more conservative than the conventional water balance method and is thus a more effective means of managing water resource conservation. Further environmental damage may be prevented if the loss function method proposed herein for determining the optimum yield can be applied to planning groundwater resources in the future. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Studies whether and how the new labor law affects outpatient nurse scheduling. • Formulates a law-fitting model and makes before/after comparisons based on the case. • Determines the nursing staff required using a novel reverse analytical approach. • Leverages the trade-off options between reducing full-time or part-time nurses. • Verifies model's effectiveness using a larger real case and a large virtual case. New labor laws that include additional legal requirements or amendments occasionally come into effect, and these new laws may also bring about challenges to common hospital operations such as outpatient nurse scheduling. This research thus examines changes in Taiwan's new labor law that might affect this scheduling problem. A binary goal programming (BGP) model appropriate to this new law is established. In order to investigate how those changes (i.e., in rest time between working days, rest time between shifts, and total maximum weekly working hours) affect scheduling decisions, we apply the model to a case in a hospital currently utilizing a different model that fits the old law and find effective concessions made to the new legislation (e.g., the tension caused by the additional overtime evening shifts during scheduling can be mitigated). The comparisons indicate that the new law does seriously affect scheduling in terms of daily work patterns, number of working days, nursing workload, and related issues. Insights are gained, showing that associated changes in the law likewise affect the human resources (HR) setting of the hospital, with a critical trade-off between reductions in full-time nurses and reductions in part-time nurses. For further model applications, a larger empirical case facing similar migration problems and another anticipated virtual problem whose size is sufficiently large in practice are also solved efficiently. Given the lack of related topics analyzing these effects on nurse scheduling, this study offers several potentially worthwhile directions for future research (e.g., another different investigation under a common law system). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protection of human health from air pollution has been typically pursued primarily via regulations of air quality standards and emission standards. Although reducing air pollution from the largest sources and placing more stringent emission limits on the industries of focus is a criterion used by decision makers to control air pollution, it is not clear whether this criterion is the most effective and efficient in improving health protection. Pollutants released from sources into the environment are spatially fluctuating rather than uniformly distributed, and hence, health risk is an issue of geographic variability. To address this issue, this study used a representative example of lead (Pb) in Taiwan. This study implemented an IO-RA methodology to redefine the effectiveness of air pollution management and rank the control priorities of target industries using different perspectives, i.e., environmental responsibility, economic benefit and repercussion potential. This study also considered the potential differences in policy effectiveness based on the air pollution control targets and ranked the industries according to their effectiveness in health risk improvement across the three perspectives and pure emission quantities. After determining the cause-effect chain of health risk through IO-RA, authorities can partner with specific industries according to the chosen effectiveness criteria and thus facilitate better policy performance., (Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)