Academic literature on the topic 'Risk Managment'

IntroductionPatients with severe mental illness are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease because of lifestyle, co-morbidity and medication effects.Aim/objectivesThe aim of this audit is to ascertain the regularity of metabolic health checks, CVD risk assessment and adequate lipid modification therapy among patients on antipsychotic medication in 3 rehabilitation wards in county Durham and Darlington.MethodAccording to audit standards (based on NICE guidelines-Schizophrenia, Lipid Modification, Maudsley guidelines), All patients should have Blood Pressure, Body Mass Index (BMI), CVD risk assessment using appropriate calculator, Fasting blood glucose and Fasting Lipid profile done at least once a year. Lipid modification therapy has to be offered to those with 10 year CVD risk of 20% or greater. All 31 patients in 3 rehabilitation wards were included. We searched for these readings between 1/09/2010 to 30/08/2010 in patient records.ResultsOf 31 patients, 26(84%) had blood pressure, 29(94%) had BMI and 11(35%) had either fasting blood sugar or HbA1c recorded. CVD risk assessment using calculator was not done in any patients. 19(61%) lipid profile done. Of the 19 patients 16 (84%) had abnormal lipid profile. 9 (26%) patients were on lipid modifying drugs, 6 (19%) patients were on appropriate dose of lipid modifying drugs.ConclusionOur audit identified a need for systemic assessment of physical health with emphasis on cardiovascular risk management (lifestyle education, lipid modification therapy) which are critical to minimising risks and preventing long term adverse health consequences.

EVOLUTION OF INTERNATIONAL AUDIT IN THE WORLDThe role of internal audit is to provide independent and objective assurance that anorganisation‘s risk managment, governance and internal control processes are operating effectively. The article presents the history of internal audit in the world, which due to environment changes as well as unfavourable occurrences taking place on the global market, play a remarkable role in banking systems.

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are an essential component of postoperative multimodal analgesia. Their analgesic efficacy has been confirmed by data from evidence-based medicine. The appearance of an intravenous form of ibuprofen on the Russian pharmaceutical market expands the possibilities of using NSAIDs in postoperative pain managment schemes. Ibuprofen characterized a high analgesic potential and an optimal safety profile in relation to the risk of gastrointestinal and cardiovascular complications.

This study aims to find empirical evidence regarding the influence of ownership concetration and board structure on credit risk. The sample of this study is the banks listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. Board structure proxied by the board size, proportion of independent commissioners, the presence of foreign commissioners, audit committee and risk management committee. The hypothesis was tested using multiple linear regression. This study found that ownership concentration 25%, ownership concentration 50% and audit committee have a positive effect on credit risk, Proportion of independent commissioners and risk managment committee have negatively affect on credit risk. While the. ownership concentration 10%, board size and the presence of foreign commissioners have no affect on credit risk.

This paper aims to conduct an analysis and exploration of matters that still needs to be considered in relation to data privacy in the online application system. This research is still a preliminary study. We conduct research related to data privacy using systematic literature review approach (SLR). Bt using SLR stages, we made a synthesis of 44 publications from Scopus Database Online that were released in the range 2015 - 2019. Based on this study, we found six things points to consider in data privacy, namely security and data protection, user awareness, risk managment, control setting, ethics, and transparency.

The aim of my thesis was to analyze and identify main types of risks and uncertainties, which can be faced by international companies. I also described main ways and methods of avoidance and minimisation of such risky situations. AB Inbev was chosen as an example since I was working in the branch of this company located in Prague, Czech Republic. This explains my concentration mainly on the market for beverages.

Au cours d'un prêt à long terme, la capacité d'un emprunteur à rembourser peut varier considérablement. En tout temps, l'emprunteur connait sa capacité de remboursement, mais s'il est coûteux pour la banque de la connaître, elle ne surveillera les prêts individuels que sporadiquement. Cette thèse propose un modèle théorique statique qui explore comment une banque qui maximise ses bénéfices choisit l'intensité de surveillance et un seuil de rentabilité minimale pour lequel le prêt est maintenu. Le modèle est ensuite utilisé pour montrer que l'assouplissement des conditions d'octroi de crédit et la baisse des spreads observés avant la crise financière ont été causés par une augmentation des dépôts de l'épargne globale plutôt qu'une politique monétaire accommodante. Par la suite, le modèle statique est étendu pour inclure des chocs globaux expliquant l'évolution des normes de crédits au cours du cycle conjoncturel. Cette analyse suggère que plusieurs éléments du cycle du crédit peuvent être considérés comme rationnels. Une dernière extension du modèle examine les effets que des taux d'intérêt fixes exercent sur l'évolution du risque de crédit et de la distribution de la rentabilité des entreprises
During the course of a long-maturity loan, a borrower's ability to repay can change quite considerably. At any point in time, this repayment capacity is known by the borrower but if it is costly for the bank to become informed, it may only monitor individual loans infrequently. This thesis presents a static theoretical model in which a profit-maximizing bank chooses its monitoring frequency and a minimum level of profitability at which the loan is allowed to continue. The model is then used to argue that the relaxation in crédit standards and lower crédit spreads observed prior to the financial crisis is better explained by a rise in global savings rather than lax monetary policy. The static model is then extended to include aggregate shocks to explain the evolution of credit terms over the business cycle. This analysis suggests that many features of the credit cycle could be rational. A further extension considers the effects of fixed interest rates on the evolution of credit risk and the cross-sectional distribution of the profitability of firms

Human impact on groundwater resources has led to a rapid growth of social concerns worldwide owing to an increasing presence of toxic chemicals released in the subsurface. Risk assessment provides the scientific tool needed to quantify the actual thread that these potential hazards pose to human health. Specifically, risk analysis enables decision makers to answer: What can happen? How likely is it to happen? What can be the consequences? Risk assessment is in this context essential. However, modeling efforts involve in risk analysis are still facing several problems. Among them, in some cases, degradation products can constitute new noxious chemical compounds not necessarily less toxic than their parent product. Thus, the original pollutants and their daughter products are susceptible to co-exist in the aquifer forming a hazardous chemical mixture composed of products of different toxicity. This renders the quantification and interpretation of human health risk a non-trivial and challenging task. Also, the lack of information in the hydraulic and biochemical properties renders transport predictions to be highly uncertain. Stochastic human health risk assessment incorporates hydrogeological uncertainty in human health predictions. This way, probabilistic risk models can be used to determine the likelihood of risk exceeding a given regulatory threshold value or the expected threat to the exposed population and its uncertainty. Unfortunately, these approaches are very computationally demanding. Moreover, the diverse mineralogical composition of a real soil and the complex spatial variability of aquifer properties can produce a mixture of rates of mass transfer between regions of mobile and immobile contaminants. Finally, risk predictions are typically challenged by the complexity of the source zone condition. Existing reactive transport models based on Eulerian methods still undergo computational burden and numerical problems when modeling strong hydro-biochemical heterogeneities with complex reactions in multi-porosity systems. In this context, Particle Tracking Methods constitute a feasible alternative but these methods are limited in the range of applicability. The work presented in this thesis proposes an efficient particle tracking solution capable to simulate serial-parallel degradation reactions in multiple porosity systems with rate-limited mass transfer and strong heterogeneities. The method is then used to characterize the human health risk posed by chemical mixtures in highly heterogeneous porous media under complex source zone conditions. In particular, we investigate the interaction between aquifer heterogeneity, connectivity, contaminant injection mode and chemical toxicity in the probabilistic characterization of health risk. We illustrate how chemical-specific travel times control the regime of the expected risk and its corresponding uncertainties. Results indicate conditions where preferential flow paths can favor the reduction of the overall risk of the chemical mixture. The overall human risk response to aquifer connectivity is shown to be non-trivial for multi-species transport. This non-triviality is a result of the interaction between aquifer heterogeneity and chemical toxicity. To quantify the joint effect of connectivity and toxicity in health risk, we propose a toxicity-based Damköhler number. Results also show that the degradation capacity of immobile water regions and the mass depletion model can play a significant role on the spatiotemporal behavior of the contaminant mixture. Our work furthermore highlights the potential impact of the water flux passing through the source zone on the effective increased lifetime cancer risk due to a reactive chemical mixture. Counter-intuitively, the source zone efficiency is shown to have a beneficial effect on the risk. The total risk tends indeed to decrease for high source zone efficiency due to the consequential decrease in travel times near the source zone.
El impacto humano sobre los recursos hídricos que forman los acuíferos es actualmente una de las grandes preocupaciones sociales en crecimiento debido a la presencia antrópica cada vez mayor de productos químicos tóxicos liberados en el subsuelo. El análisis de riesgo proporciona la herramienta científica necesaria para cuantificar el peligro real que estos contaminantes suponen para la salud humana. En concreto, el análisis de riesgo permite tomar decisiones que respondan a las siguientes preguntas: Qué puede pasar?. Qué tan probable es que suceda? Cuál pueden ser las consecuencias?. El análisis de riesgo es una herramienta clave en este sentido. Sin embargo, los esfuerzos de modelación necesarios para llevar a cabo el análisis de riesgo se enfrentan con varios problemas. Entre ellos, algunos productos tóxicos de degradación pueden constituir nuevos compuestos químicos nocivos no necesariamente menos tóxico que su producto padre. Por lo tanto, los contaminantes originales y sus productos hijos son susceptibles de coexistir en los acuíferos formando una mezcla de compuestos químicos de diferente toxicidad. Esto hace que la cuantificación e interpretación del riesgo para la salud humana sea una tarea no trivial y desafiante. Por otra parte, la falta de informaci´on en las propiedades hidráulicas y bioquímicos hace que las predicciones sobre el comportamiento de dichos contaminantes en el subsuelo sean altamente inciertas. El análisis de riesgo estocástico incorpora de forma natural la incertidumbre hidrogeológica que existe en las predicciones de riesgo para la salud humana. De esta manera, estos modelos pueden ser utilizados para determinar la probabilidad de que el riesgo supere un valor umbral o el valor esperado del riesgo y su incertidumbre. Desafortunadamente, estos enfoques son muy exigentes en tiempo de cálculo. Además de estas dos problemáticas, también se tiene que tener en cuenta que la composición mineralógica de un suelo real es diversa y variable en el espacio. Muchas veces esto implica la transferencia de masa entre zonas de contaminantes móviles e inmóviles. Esto último exige modelos sofisticados de transporte que, por ejemplo, conceptualicen el medio poroso como un sistema multi-porosidad. Finalmente, la complejidad que existe en el comportamiento del foco de contaminación hace complicado un análisis de riesgo. Los líquidos tóxicos densos y no acuosos ilustran perfectamente esta complejidad. Una vez en el subsuelo, estos líquidos liberación lentamente los contaminantes dentro del acuífero de acuerdo con una tasa de agotamiento que depende fuertemente de la arquitectura errática del foco de contaminación. Los modelos de transporte reactivo eulerianos tienen problemas numéricos cuando se simulan fuertes heterogeneidades hidro-bioquímicos en el terreno al mismo tiempo que reacciones químicas complejas en sistemas multi-porosidad. En este contexto, los métodos de trayectorias de partículas constituyen una alternativa viable. Sin embargo, estos métodos pueden tener en cuenta un rango pequeño de reacciones químicas. El trabajo presentado en esta tesis propone una solución a estos problemas mediante un método de trayectoria de partículas. El método es eficiente y capaz de simular cadenas y redes de degradación en sistemas heterogéneos con porosidad múltiples. El método se basa en el desarrollo de probabilidades de transición que describen las probabilidades de que las partículas que pertenecen a un estado determinado (producto químico y región móvil / inmóvil) en un momento dado se transformará en otro estado en un momento posterior. El método se utiliza para caracterizar el riesgo para la salud humana que representan las mezclas de degradación en medios porosos altamente heterogéneos derivados de focos de contaminación complejos. En particular, se investiga la interacción entre la heterogeneidad, la conectividad, el modo de inyección de los contaminantes y su toxicidad química con respecto a la caracterización probabilística del riesgo para la salud humana. Los resultados indican las condiciones mediante las cuales las vías de flujo preferencial pueden favorecer la reducción del riesgo para la salud humana. La dependencia de la conectividad con el riego se demuestra que no es nada trivial cuando se trata de mezclas de compuestos químicos. Esta no trivialidad es el resultado de la interacción entre la heterogeneidad del acuífero y la toxicidad de los compuestos químicos. Para cuantificar el efecto conjunto de la conectividad y la toxicidad en el riesgo para la salud, se propone un número de Damköhler nuevo que tiene en cuenta la toxicidad. Además, el riesgo también se caracteriza en términos estadísticos mediante momentos de bajo orden y funciones de densidad de probabilidad. Los resultados también muestran que tanto la capacidad de degradación de zonas inmóviles como los modelos existentes de agotamiento del foco pueden desempeñar un papel muy significativo en el análisis espacio-temporal del riesgo. Este trabajo también muestra que la eficiencia del foco de contaminación para concentrar el flujo puede tener un efecto beneficioso sobre el riesgo. El riesgo total de hecho tiende a disminuir para eficiencias grandes debido a la disminución consecuente en tiempos de viaje cerca del foco de contaminación, limitando la producción de productos de degradación más tóxicos.

The Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) requires public schools to manage asbestos containing materials. Twenty five years after AHERA was enacted public schools continue to struggle with documenting and managing asbestos containing material assets. In addition, the manufacturing of lead based paint (LBP) was banned over thirty years ago yet public schools continue to have to manage LBP assets with no guidelines specific to public schools. When compared to current civil infrastructure asset management systems, AHERA and the HUD guidelines lack a rating system based on visual inspection data. The development of a condition index algorithm and risk of failure model would provide school planners an efficient management tool to predict the future condition of asbestos containing material and lead based paint assets. As a result, school planners would be able to prioritize maintenance, repair, and abatement projects based on the risk to the indoor air quality of their facilities and more efficiently utilize their limited resources to mitigate such risks. This paper presents initial work toward the development of a visual condition index algorithm and a risk of failure model to support prioritization of maintenance, repair, and abatement projects. The condition assessment categories provided by AHERA and HUD were adapted and incorporated in an evaluation form created to assist in rating the various stages of accessibility, deterioration, and detection of typical ACM and LBP building components. The evaluation form can be utilized by inspection and school personnel when reclassifying ACM and LBP components during semi-annual inspections of their facilities and also ensure the repeatability of the condition assessment and risk of failure methodologies. A risk of failure model was developed utilizing the FMEA process, specifically the calculation of a risk priority number (RPN). Three schools were selected for a field pilot study to develop the accessibility, deterioration, detection, and RPN algorithms and evaluate for repeatability. The algorithms will provide a quantitative and consistent means for documenting the condition and RPN of asbestos containing material and lead based paint assets and allow the condition of these assets to be monitored and reclassified over a period of time.
Ph. D.

This thesis uses a new institutional sociology perspective to examine financial risk management practices adopted by Saudi listed companies and identify the factors that influence these practices. In Islamic shariah law, using conventional derivatives is prohibited and so this thesis aims to determine if there is an institutional logic within the organisational field and a community of practice that results from networks of actors. The study also, examines the effect of different types of coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures on the adoption of risk management practices by Saudi listed companies. For this purpose, two pieces of empirical work are employed, (i) semi- structured interviews; and (ii) statistical tests. The interviews were held with 22 treasury managers of Saudi listed companies in 2011 to explore their perspectives of financial risk management practices. The second empirical work uses binary logistic regression to test the factors that might affect the adoption of financial risk management practices of 132 listed companies using publicly available data in 2011. Most of the previous studies relating to financial risk management practices have been undertaken in developing countries Therefore, there is a need to expand the scope of existing research by investigating such practices in Islamic countries to test the relevance of existing theory there and to enrich the risk financial management literature. This thesis investigate 12 factors: (the influence of political factors, cultural factors, and the competitive environment in Saudi society as well as nine institutional characteristics, comprising: firm size; profitability; leverage; being an Islamic company; auditor type; industrial sector; ownership structure; number of subsidiaries and exports) to identify to what extent they affect the financial risk management practices in the organisational field. The main findings indicate that Saudi listed companies hedge more interest rate risk than other financial risks, using conventional derivatives contracts which are prohibited in Islam. This finding is surprising in a country such as Saudi Arabia that is regulated and dominated by Shariah law. The political, cultural and competitive environments also affect the financial risk management practices in the organisational field. In addition, firm size in Saudi Arabia is related to interest rate risk and foreign exchange rate risk; also more leveraged companies and companies audited by Big-4 firms hedge interest rate risk. In addition, Islamic companies depend on Islamic derivatives that are available to hedge financial risk. Furthermore, the profitability of companies, industrial sector and their ownership structure has little influence on the risk management practices in Saudi listed companies. Finally, having subsidiaries and exports also affects hedging practices. It seems that actors are involved in similar networks and that considerable boundary-spanning takes place across these networks especially by treasury managers. This results in several different communities of practice with different organisational logics.

This thesis takes a new data mining approach for analyzing road/crash data by developing models for the whole road network and generating a crash risk profile. Roads with an elevated crash risk due to road surface friction deficit are identified. The regression tree model, predicting road segment crash rate, is applied in a novel deployment coined regression tree extrapolation that produces a skid resistance/crash rate curve. Using extrapolation allows the method to be applied across the network and cope with the high proportion of missing road surface friction values. This risk profiling method can be applied in other domains.

This research has led to a novel methodology for assessment and quantification of supply risks in the supply chain. The research has built on advanced Knowledge Discovery techniques and has resulted to a software implementation to be able to do so. The methodology developed and presented here resembles the well-known consumer credit scoring methods as it leads to a similar metric, or score, for assessing a supplier’s reliability and risk of conducting business with that supplier. However, the focus is on a wide range of operational metrics rather than just financial, which credit scoring techniques typically focus on. The core of the methodology comprises the application of Knowledge Discovery techniques to extract the likelihood of possible risks from within a range of available datasets. In combination with cross-impact analysis, those datasets are examined for establish the inter-relationships and mutual connections among several factors that are likely contribute to risks associated with particular suppliers. This approach is called conjugation analysis. The resulting parameters become the inputs into a logistic regression which leads to a risk scoring model the outcome of the process is the standardized risk score which is analogous to the well-known consumer risk scoring model, better known as FICO score. The proposed methodology has been applied to an Air Conditioning manufacturing company. Two models have been developed. The first identifies the supply risks based on the data about purchase orders and selected risk factors. With this model the likelihoods of delivery failures, quality failures and cost failures are obtained. The second model built on the first one but also used the actual data about the performance of supplier to identify risks of conducting business with particular suppliers. Its target was to provide quantitative measures of an individual supplier’s risk level. The supplier risk scoring model is tested on the data acquired from the company for its performance analysis. The supplier risk scoring model achieved 86.2% accuracy, while the area under curve (AUC) was 0.863. The AUC curve is much higher than required model’s validity threshold value of 0.5. It represents developed model’s validity and reliability for future data. The numerical studies conducted with real-life datasets have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and system as well as its future potential for industrial adoption.

Darbo uždaviniai: Apibrėžti projektų valdymą, galimas problemas apibrėžti personalo vadybos sampratą; atskleisti mokymosi šiuolaikinėje organizacijoje svarbą; ištirti apmokymų poreikį realiai egzistuojančioje Lietuvos organizacijoje; pateikti apibendrinančias išvadas. Šio darbo pagrindinis uždavinys buvo atskleisti ir išanalizuoti projektų valdymo problemas personalo vadybos aspektu.
This work „Project managment, problems, prevency soliutions“ is analizy of the training importance in the successful activity of the company and project management. It was necessary to show that increasing results of the company activity depend on human resourses management. It’s showed the need to organize training regulary. Calculated results of the questionnaire allow organizing directly the training of staff. Tha main conclution – future belongs to those companies and organizations, who organize training regularlt, especially in project management and modern technologies.

Includes abstract.~Includes bibliographical references (leaves 39-41).
The withdwal of the Maize Board in 1996 meant that farmers could no longer rely on their pre-planting price or "voorskat" for price discovery and price risk management. Some have claimed (UNCTAD, 2007) that the South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX) can provide these functions. We test this claim and analyse the impliacation of it.

Risk management is a key requirement in the events industry today. All elements in event delivery have to be considered in the decision to deliver the event during the planning phase, and this information has to be shared with all the stakeholders so that they are able to input it to the document. The chapter highlights useful models such the EMBOK and also the five-step process to enable both practitioners and those wishing to gain a greater knowledge and understanding on what can potentially be a complex area. This is further supported with a body of knowledge of those who have written in the area and support some the ideas that have been presented.

Climate change and institutional forest management practices are leading to more frequent and severe wildfire events around the world, a trend that is projected to increase in coming years. Wildfire plays an important role in maintaining ecological systems, but wildfires also pose threats to health, safety, infrastructure, and important ecosystem services. Reactionary response to these threats has predominantly informed management decisions in recent decades and greater focus on mitigation and adaptation is needed. Through a community directed consultation process, the goal of this work has been to provide direct, operational information to aid in local management decision making for a First Nations community in British Columbia, Canada. Here we use a combination of field sampling and high-resolution Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) data to assess vertical and horizontal fuel loading at fine resolution (~10m2). Our analysis found a high degree of fuel loading heterogeneity in areas characterized as homogeneous using coarser fuel layers and provided a means of identifying high fire risk areas that may be targeted for ecosystem rehabilitation aimed at reducing current and future fire risk. We discuss how this spatially explicit data can be used to evaluate feedback between forest dynamics and fuel loading; information critical for managing forests for multiple objectives into the future. Following our analysis, we compiled our results for the community into an interactive decision support web mapping platform designed with the goal of user friendly, accessible land managment planning, avoiding the need for technical expertise and internal capacity.

On large industrial or nuclear sites there is a requirement to undertake assessments of land quality, from desk studies to detailed field investigations. Data obtained from such investigations provides the baseline from which known or potentially contaminated land can be managed. However, a commonly encountered problem is that this information is often disparate, collected for reasons not related to land quality management, with data from previous ground investigations also exhibiting the following particular problems: • The intent of a previous investigation is often not clear. • There can be much variability in investigation and analytical methods and standards. • The investigation techniques and standards are not documented. • Ground investigation and analytical data does not have adequate quality control in order to make a judgment about its value and applicability. Consequently, a commonly occurring problem is the frequent re-investigation of the same areas of a site for reasons that may not be very different. This is costly and incurs unnecessary risks. In order to resolve this problem, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), in conjunction with ESiT Ltd, has developed and implemented a software application to capture, interrogate and present land quality assessment data for its sites across the UK. The overall assessment of land quality on the sites relies on information that is both varied and disparate in nature. Tools are therefore required to structure and assess this information to enable clear interpretation and management decisions to be made. UKAEA has applied these tools to several areas within its environmental restoration programme including delicensing activities, Safety Cases for contaminated ground, inventories of land liabilities as well as the general monitoring of the environmental conditions on and surrounding the sites. This paper will describe the software application in the context of its function as a land quality management tool. The software application, known as the Information Management and Geographic Evaluation System (IMAGES), has a modular design and facilitates multi-user access. IMAGES interfaces with standard desktop applications to enable straightforward upload or reporting of data. There are also interfaces with industry standard software packages for spatial analysis of data (ArcGIS) and to provide representation of borehole logging data. The modules that make up IMAGES are: • Land & Risk Assessment “Sentencing”; • Document Register; • Photograph/Image register; • Site Investigation; • Excavation & Soil Transfer; • Groundwater Monitoring; • Radiation survey (Health Physics) Monitoring; • Buildings Information; • Geographic Information System (GIS) Data Management. The IMAGES solution is process based, dealing with data acquisition through storage and interpretation to output and has the ability to systematically deal with large volumes of information while ensuring consistency in approach at each stage. It also provides data that is access and revision-controlled and quality assessed. IMAGES also includes a series of standard data capture templates to enable environmental monitoring and site investigation information to be captured directly in the field and automatically logged into the IMAGES relational database structure. Data within the system can be quality assessed and queried using a map-based interface. Information held within IMAGES can also be delivered seamlessly into UKAEA’s Geographic Information System (GIS) for visual assessment and further analysis.

<p>The development of digital technology is increasing ever exponentially. Large Infrastructure organisations like railways but also water, electricity, etc have struggled to keep up with and utilise this new digital technology effectively. This due to many factors; the size and burden of the existing asset base, limited funding, and perhaps just as importantly knowledge and competence. The later is not just about growing a new knowledge in our workforce but also understanding that opportunities (and risks) that digital technologies can bring.</p><p>The massive opportunity is to utilise this technology explosion to transform Asset Management in large infrastructure organisations to bring the cost base down, and utilise whole life managment in ways we have not yet achieved. This together with the completely new way of working and increased functionality and capability is creating a compelling business case. Indeed the business case is more than just good asset management, as these new technologies provide increased functionality to the primary objectives of the railway such as increased capacity, performance, and asset reliability whilst lowering costs.</p><p>Having described this, many would say we have all been on the journey for some years. But if we honestly ask ourselves we would have to admit that the first systems we railways started using in the late 1990s have already been replaced, or we are on radically upgraded versions. This because the data structures, the amount of data, the functionalities we need to process and access the data, turning data into useful information and most importantly knowledge are still emerging.</p><p>This is perhaps obvious to us all, but some much is changing in multiple directions if is difficult to see the whole picture to utilise these primary capabilities to enable a step change in our Asset Management processes. I believe it is helpful to separate and look at the individual processes.</p><p>In this presentation I will explain Network Rail’s vision and strategy to develop and radically improve the railway we provide in services to our Customers and in its Asset Management. I will then go on to show examples of the ongoing RD &amp;T work and our first steps on the journey.</p>

A unique double gear fuel pump system with operation mode switching capability for aircraft engines was developed to solve the heat management problem of current high efficiency turbofan engines and improve Specific Fuel Consumption (SFC). Mode switching from parallel operations to series operations was found to reduce the discharge flow and pump work to nearly half. This resulted in the reduction of the rise in fuel temperature due to the fuel re-circulation at the high altitude low Mach number flight condition. Air Cooled Oil Cooler (ACOC) is usually required for sufficient oil cooling at decent or approach flight conditions. Since fuel consumption at those conditions is not very high, most of the gear pump discharge fuel flow proportional to the engine speed is returned to the fuel pump inlet resulting in significant heating. The ACOC that provides additional cooling capability degrades SFC due to not only increased weight but also wasted fan discharge air. By reducing fuel temperature rise at the pump at those flight conditions, the necessity of ACOC may be eliminated. Further, it is shown that a reduction by half of the double gear pump weight can be achieved by increasing pump speed twice (2x) without incurring a durability penalty. Extensive tests showed sufficient steady state pump performance, switching characteristics, and durability.