BACKGROUND The workplace has been identified as a priority setting to positively influence individuals' dietary behaviours. However, a dearth of evidence exists regarding the costs of implementing and delivering workplace dietary interventions. This study aimed to conduct a cost-analysis of workplace nutrition education and environmental dietary modification interventions from an employer's per...

Large-scale noise pollution sensor networks consist of hundreds of spatially distributed microphones that measure environmental noise. These networks provide historical and real-time environmental data to citizens and decision makers and are therefore a key technology to steer environmental policy. However, the high cost of certified environmental microphone sensors render large-scale environme...

While an ever increasing number of clients and professionals are committed to achieving high levels of energy and environmental standards in new and retrofit projects, the investment community still has not moved beyond first cost decisionmaking. The need for life cycle decisionmaking will depend on multiple national and international efforts to develop the financial algorithms and collect the ...

As a result of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, electric power supply in Japan faced a critical situation; in particular, factories that consume a large amount of electric power were seriously affected. Meanwhile, in China and other emerging countries, where the economic growth rate is high and automation of manufacturing factories is progressing, further energy saving is a key is...

There is no doubt that related to safety-critical systems such as chemical plants, nuclear reactors, space shuttles and aircrafts, the issues of reliability, operating safety and environmental protection are of major importance. However, these issues together with increasing demands for availability and cost efficiency are relevant to not only mentioned safety-critical systems, but also other i...

The ecosystem health concept is an integrative approach to environmental management and while conceptually logical, it is difficult to implement. The false dichotomy of nature and culture, and the way in which knowledge is constructed has led to many of these problems. To understand the relationship between knowledge systems, the ecosystem health concept is explored here by assessing the condit...

This paper presents a new graduate level cost analysis course that has been taught in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maryland. The objective of this course is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the process of predicting the cost of systems. Elements of traditional engineering economics are melded with manufacturing process modeling, life cycle cost...

In today’s global economy, assessing costs of compliance is crucial to understand how environmental regulations infl uence fi rms’ behaviour and in particular their ability to compete at an international level. A three step methodology is used to conduct a comparison of Scotland’s industry with the international community. The fi rst step compares environmental protection expenditures among the...