Composite indicator for railway infrastructure management

The assessment and analysis of railway infra structure capacity is an essential task in railway infra structure management carried out to meet the required quality and capacity demand of railway transport. For sustainable and dependable infrastructure management, it is important to assess railway capacity limitation from the point of view of infrastructure performance. However, the existence of numerous performance indicators often leads to diffused information that is not in a format suitable to support decision making. In this paper, we demonstrated the use of fuzzy inference system for aggregating selected railway infrastructure performance indicators to relate maintenance function to capacity situation. The selected indicators consider the safety, comfort, punctuality and reliability aspects of railway infrastructure performance. The resulting composite indicator gives a reliable quanti fication of the health condition or integrity of railway lines. A case study of the assessment of overall infrastructure performance which is an indication of capacity limitation is presented using indicator data between 2010 and 2012 for five lines on the network of Trafikverket （Swedish Trans port Administration）. The results are presented using cus tomised performance dashboard for enhanced visualisation,quick understanding and relevant comparison structure conditions for strategic management. This gives additional information on capacity status and limitation from maintenance management perspective.

New Composite Indicator for the Business Tendency Survey

Short-term surveys provide precious information for economic fluctuations analysis. In short-term surveys like the business tendency survey, most of the questions are qualitative and concern the evolution of different economic factors of the business activity. They provide economic information on the present situation and short-term perspectives. Usually, the respondents have to choose between three possible evolutions： increase （improvement, favourable, level higher than the normal）, stability （normal） or decrease （unfavourable, level lower than the normal）. The balance of opinion is defined as the difference between the proportion of respondents expressing a positive opinion and the proportion expressing a negative opinion. To analyze these types of surveys, the methods are well standardized and use both the multidimensional approach and time series （scoring, dynamic factor analysis, etc.） In this paper, the authors propose a new method of calculating a robust composite indicator based on range median statistics, and on a lexicographical order relation of the individual data. A confidence interval is constructed around these statistics. The indicator＇s advantage is simplicity of calculation in comparison with the Mitchell, Smith and Weale （2004） index （MSW）, while its effectiveness seems to be of the same order. It was used on a Ukrainian dataset for the construction sector. This procedure can be applied to the surveys that contain correlated ordered qualitative answers.

A Novel Approach to Construct a Composite Indicator by Maximizing Its Sum of Squared Correlations with Sub-Indicators

In the paper, a novel practical approach to construct a composite indicator （CI） is pro- posed. The key idea is to decide the weights of sub-indicators in constructing a composite indicator by maximizing the sum of squared correlations between the CI and sub-indicators. The CI obtained in this fashion has the maximum sum of squared correlations among all linear estimators. In addition, the simple, exact and explicit solutions of weights are proposed under the condition of non-negative irreducible matrix. Moreover, under this particular condition, the proposed method will become the principal component analysis. For illustration purpose, the proposed novel approach is utilized to cal- culate Sustainable Energy Index and Human Development Index which are two often-used cases to compare models in the literatures. The results the methods of Hatefi, et al. （2010） and Zhou all sub-indicators＇ correlations. show that the power of the proposed method outweigh et al. （2007） in terms of the sum of absolute values of

Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis to Measure Multidimensional Poverty in Congo

The following analysis is based on a multidimensional understanding of poverty using a nonmonetary basic needs approach. It is ground on data from the first survey on household living conditions for poverty assessment, conducted by the National Institute of Statistics of Congo in 2005. Multiple Correspondence Analysis is applied to construct a composite indicator by aggregating several attributes likely to reflect the poverty of individuals or households. The application shows that Congolese households are not affected by the same type of poverty. Three types of non-monetary poverty are identified: infrastructure poverty, vulnerability of human existence and poverty of comfort. These households were then classified according to the composite indicator of Poverty. The results show that the incidence of poverty corresponds to the weight of poor class of about 70.67%.

Measuring(Transnational)Organized Crime as an Indicator of Global Justice

Organized crime impacts on societies,and it is one of the main threats to global justice.Assessment of the presence and activities of organized crime is therefore crucial for the design of effective policies and actions.Several methodological approaches have been proposed to address the two main challenges implied by this effort:(1)the complexity of defining what organized crime is;and(2)the collection and generation of reliable data to estimate it.Moreover,organized crime groups increasingly engage in illicit activities that extend beyond their traditional territories and the borders of a single state.This expansion is facilitated by the ever-growing economic and social connections among people and countries.This poses serious threats to countries and their citizens by generating direct and indirect economic damage,affecting social structures,and hindering the development and stability of states.This paper discusses the latest methodological advances in measurement of OC within a country or a region.It then describes a strategy for assessing OC presence based on the estimation of the transnational illicit markets and the role of countries in those illicit networks.Examples from the current research studies are provided.

Rapid assessment checklist for green roof ecosystem services in Bangkok,Thailand

Background:A green roof is a man-made ecosystem created when a rooftop is covered with substrate and vegetation.Although green roof ecosystems(GREs)are able to provide ecosystem services,there is currently no assessment tool available to specifically evaluate this.Therefore,the aim of this study was to develop a rapid assessment checklist(RAC)to assess GRE services(GRES),which was developed and tested on 10 green roofs in Bangkok,Thailand.Results:The RAC consisted of 46 proxy indicators(33 qualitative and 13 quantitative indicators)encompassing various aspects of GRESs.The GRES values or scores varied according to structural differences in the green roofs.The average score(from a maximum of 100)of total ecosystem services was 61±7,which could be inferred as a good performance in ecosystem service provision.The highest scores were obtained from the regulating services at 68±7.The lowest average score was 53±11 from the provisioning services.Conclusions:The RAC was able to evaluate the levels of GRES provided by the selected green roofs,enabling the meaningful comparison of their potential capability to provide GRES.Therefore,this RAC could be an innovative tool for evaluation of four categories of GRES.