Infrastructure Engineering - Theses
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ItemUsing land administration for land risk management( 2013)The impact of risk and disaster events on land and property within the developed world in the last decades has highlighted a significant problem in the ability of citizens and governments to address and respond to these threats. A breakdown in the process of identifying, analysing, evaluating and treating these risks has occurred, leaving communities exposed and vulnerable to a range of very real risk possibilities. The integration of land administration information and risk management processes is considered essential for achieving effective land risk management practices and community resilience for risk events. However, in most countries, land administration and risk management are usually disparate disciplines. This research addresses this problem with the overall aim of facilitating improved risk management of land and property for all stakeholders. This research investigates how land administration could support the process of managing risk to land and property for a range of stakeholders. Its primary objective is to develop a land risk management model which illustrates how these two elements, land administration and risk management, could be integrated to enable the implementation of effective land risk management practices by all stakeholders and to facilitate the development of a resilient community. A mixed methods research design was utilised which included the use of a case study approach focusing on developed countries with established land administration systems. The research developed: an understanding of the issues which impact upon the ability of land administration agencies to contribute to land risk management as well as the factors which motivate them to participate; an understanding of the stakeholder roles and responsibilities in the process of land risk management; and finally, a land risk management model which illustrates a ‘to be’ situation for how land administration could support land risk management if the issues and factors identified were addressed. The model is realised as a prototype system which demonstrates how land administration information can facilitate the effective implementation of land risk management processes and strategies. This research goes beyond the disaster risk reduction and disaster risk management strategies which have emerged from the integration of traditional disaster management models with the process of risk management. In these new models, only specific elements of the risk management process are incorporated and the focus remains largely on the response and recovery elements. This research focuses more heavily on the entire risk management process and all of the elements within the model and is applied specifically to the problem of risk affecting land and property and how this risk can be managed. Applying more attention to the risk management process enables the development of a more resilient community through thorough identification, acknowledgement, assessment and treatment of risks affecting land and property. The integration of land administration facilitates the process enabling stakeholders to better understand the risks which affect their land and property through a user centred view. The study concludes that the current land risk management processes are not sufficient and that improvements are required to achieve community resilience to risk events. The findings reveal that land administration systems have the potential to support land risk management practices and have significant motivational factors however changes to policy, legal, institutional and technical arrangements are first required. It is expected that land risk management initiatives will continue to be high profile issues as climate change brings more frequent and severe weather events. The success of future community resilience will therefore rely heavily on improved management processes for managing risk to land and property through the utilisation of land administration information and engagement of all stakeholders.
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ItemA Value at risk approach to the assessment and evaluation of economic risk and return associated with large open pit slope design( 2012)The two major costs associated with open pit mine operations are excavation and haulage of waste rock. While the steepening of a design slope angle may reduce both the amount of excavation and haulage of waste rock, and hence their costs, it also increases the risk of failure. Major slope failures incur significant cost elements including cleanup, disruption to mine operation and damage to mining equipment. Engineers are often faced with a difficult task of balancing the slope formation cost and failure cost. Technological advancements have allowed larger and deeper open pit mine operations, but also created higher economic impact of potential slope failures. Given the ultimate aim of mining operators is to maximise overall profits, it is surprising to see that most related research activities have been focused on slope stability modelling, with limited studies conducted on geotechnical uncertainties and their associated economic risks. As most major decisions in the mining industry are made by senior management staff and financial staff, any attempt on linking slope stability analysis results with monetary values would improve the critical communication between geotechnical designers and decision makers. The aim of this study is to propose an improved method to existing practices in the economic risk assessment and evaluation of large open pit slope designs. The study estimates the impact of slope failures on project value, which would enable economic risks associated with pit slope designs to be examined. The conversion of slope failure risk into monetary terms is complex as there are numerous factors that influence the cost of failure. On top of clean-up cost, disruptions caused by slope failures are incorporated into mine planning and operation to estimate the economic consequence. To account for the variable nature of geotechnical uncertainties, a sampling technique is employed to simulate a broad range of possible scenarios for assessment. In addition to providing better information for decision makers, quantifying geotechnical uncertainty into monetary terms allows slope risks to be effectively communicated to stakeholders without a strong background in rock mechanics. Value at Risk (VaR) is introduced to assess economic risks of pit slope designs. The approach was originally employed in the financial sector to assess risks. This study proposes and illustrates how the method can be extended to assess economic risks of pit slope instability. VaR concentrates on the tail end of a distribution curve and is suitable to assess infrequent events such as slope failures. The application of VaR approach is straightforward and will effectively communicate geotechnical risks to stakeholders of mining operations. Conditional Value at Risk considers values exceeding VaR and is also presented. This risk measure may be preferred by some practitioners as it investigates scenarios beyond VaR. The risk-adjusted returns concepts are also introduced to evaluate alternative slope designs. They measure return for the amount of risk involved and enable design options with differing risks and returns to be ranked for decision making. In comparison with the usual slope design selection practices, this approach weighs up economic risks and returns systematically and transparently. Through sensitivity analysis, the financial implication of geotechnical uncertainties is compared with other key economic variables. The results would enable improved understanding of how geotechnical uncertainties are ranked with other variables and justification of the more comprehensive slope risk assessment approach in this research. The proposed method is highly versatile and has the potential to include assessments of other mining risks. This encourages establishment of standardised risk assessment procedures across various disciplines and promotes the use of Enterprise Risk Management in mining. The open pit of Telfer Gold Mine, Newcrest Mining, located in Western Australia, is used as a case study to illustrate the implementation of the proposed VaR approach to assess the economic risks and returns associated with different pit slope designs. The case study demonstrates that compared with conventional cost-benefit method, results from the proposed approach enable risk and return of designs to be examined in much more detail. It also indicates that the influence of geotechnical uncertainties on returns is comparable to some of the key economic variables.
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ItemKey challenges of information technology project risk management( 2011)High failure rate of IT projects, cost and schedule overruns and failure to deliver expected requirements make IT project risk management an important topic to help overcome the facing difficulties and deliver projects more successfully. There are varieties of advice on IT project management as well as project risk management over the years in both practitioner and academic literatures. It is argued that the primary concerns in IT projects are to ensure the integrity of the development process by having all identified risk factors controlled under an effective management tool. External threatening events are discussed adequately in IT project risk management literature in both descriptive risk management and prescriptive strands. However, there is a shortfall in analysing internal influential factors. There is lack of evidence in the literature, regarding the impact of influential project environmental characteristics known as environmental enablers on risk management practice as well as the relationship among environmental enablers, risk management effectiveness, and project performance. This study tries to address the gap in the empirical investigation into all phases of IT project risk management practice and the lack of significant investigation in terms of relationship analysis for risk management practice and project performance. It is attainable by gaining insights into how project managers employ risk management practices. Based on the belief that those engaged in practice have the most relevant practical view, it is decided to implement the research study described in this thesis by conducting a survey, which would support a structured and purposeful exploratory approach. The status of risk management was analysed from six perspectives of risk identification, evaluation, treatment, monitoring, motivation, and responsibility assignment. Research findings indicate that practicing risk management has direct impact on the project performance, which means the more projects had effective risk management practices, the higher was the chance of meeting budget, schedule, and delivering business case benefits. It was evident that providing risk management techniques to the projects, support project cost management as the motivation for risk management practice and employing project budget as an effectiveness indicator are significantly related to the ability of the project to meet the budget. It was also identified, that provision of risk management training from sponsoring organisations to the projects and supporting quality management help the projects to meet the schedule. Another finding of the research study was that supporting schedule management by employing risk management practices assist in achieving business case benefits. These figures may assist project managers to consider risk management practice not only as a risk dealing procedure but also as a tool to improve project performance.
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ItemThe value of critical project decisions: measurement and modelling( 2010)Efficient delivery of major capital projects has proven difficult for many Governments. There are numerous examples of cost and time overruns that result from the inherently risky environment in which such projects are managed. The performance of capital projects is largely determined by the decisions, especially the critical ones (‘critical decisions’ are the decisions made at high management level with significant influences on the entire project performance; a decision on whether to accept the business case of a project is an example of the ‘critical decision’) made on projects. (For complete abstract open document.)